The Age of Reason Ebook

The Age
of Reason
The Complete Edition
by Thomas Paine
With an introduction by Bob Johnson
Copyright © 2009 by World Union of Deists
www.deism.com
Open source book except for commercial use
Published by
Truth Seeker Company
239 S Juniper Street
Escondido, California 92025
www.truthseeker.com
ISBN# 978-0-939040-35-3
CONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
– Part First –
Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology. . . . . . . . . 1
Autobiographical Interlude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
– Part Second –
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
As to the Old Testament. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Turning to the New Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .144
– Part Third –
Author's Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Essay on Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Examination of the Prophecies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Author's Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Miscellaneous Writings
Of the Religion of Deism Compared With the Christian
Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Biblical Blasphemy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
The Tower of Babel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
A Letter to a Friend Regarding The Age of Reason . . . . . . . . . . 223
Thomas Paine’s Ideas Regarding Death in a Letter to
Andrew Dean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Correspondence Between Thomas Paine and Samuel Adams. . 230
Of the Word “Religion” and Other Words of Uncertain
Signification. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
iv The Age of Reason
Predestination – Remarks on Romans IX, 18-21. . . . . . . . . . . . 242

On the Sabbath-Day in Connecticut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
To the Members of the Society Styling Itself the
Missionary Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Origins of Freemasonry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
The Existence of God – A Discourse at the Society of
Theophilanthropists, Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Extract From a Reply to the Bishop of Llandaff. . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Worship and Church Bells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Remarks on R. Hall’s Sermon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
Of Cain and Able . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Of the Books of the New Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Hints on Inquiring into Religious History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
To Bishop Moore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
To John Mason, Presbyterian Minister . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
Of the Old and New Testament. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Biblical Anachronism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Thomas Paine’s Response to Charismatic Christian Revivals . . 334
Thoughts on a Future State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
Humorous Poem: The Monk and the Jew. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
On Deism and the Writings of Thomas Paine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
End Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
INTRODUCTION
have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all
“I Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in
this republic . . . It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine’s
works in my boyhood . . . it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read
that great thinker’s views on political and theological subjects. Paine
educated me then about many matters of which I had never before
thought. I remember very vividly the flash of enlightenment that
shone from Paine’s writings and I recall thinking at that time, ‘What
a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!’
My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his
works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since
my boyhood days.”
The above quote is from Thomas Edison. It reveals how the
writings and ideas of Thomas Paine sparked Edison at a very early
age to think outside the box, a quality he applied throughout his life
as he brought progress and advancements to the world. This same
spark of enlightenment can enrich the lives of anyone who is fortu-
nate enough to read Thomas Paine’s works. It would, indeed, prove a
profound blessing for the planet if Thomas Paine’s works were of-
fered to all school children starting in junior high school. They
would then be able to develop reason as their guide instead of emo-
tion and/or peer pressure. This quality would be a lifetime asset for
them and the world.
Thomas Paine is one of history’s most overlooked important
figures. When we stop and think that without Paine’s Common Sense
the American Revolution probably never would have taken place
and that without his The Crisis, it probably never would have ended
successfully, we then realize the vital importance of Paine and we
begin to get an inkling of what gratitude and respect we owe him and
what benefits we can enjoy by reading his thoughts and ideas. Add to
these tremendous important accomplishments of Thomas Paine’s all
vi The Age of Reason
the good he did after the American Revolution by writing The Rights
of Man and fighting to prevent the reign of terror during the French
Revolution and it’s very difficult to understand why history has vir-
tually turned its back on him. But there is a reason for this unwar-
ranted neglect.
The reason for largely ignoring Paine is because of his religious
beliefs. Thomas Paine was a Deist. That is, he believed that the de-
signs in Nature point us to the Designer of Nature, or as is written in
The Declaration of Independence, Nature’s God. As a Deist, he also
rejected the claims made by Christianity and the other “revealed” re-
ligions (as opposed to natural religion) of having received a special
divine revelation as well as their claims to miracles and that their
scriptures are “the Word of God.” To Thomas Paine, and to all Deists
past and present, the only Word of God is the creation itself. In spite
of the fact that Deism, belief in God, is the opposite of Atheism, no
belief in God, and that Deism is the first article of all religions, the
simple belief in God, the Christian clergy and their political partners
viciously attacked Paine calling him an Atheist and scaring their
flocks into believing that The Age of Reason is the Devil’s work!
Their fabricated attacks on Paine were so strong that decades later
Theodore Roosevelt referred to Thomas Paine as “that filthy little
Atheist!”
Thomas Paine wanted to write about religion for a long time be-
fore he wrote The Age of Reason. However, he wanted to save it for
his last writing, believing that when a person is facing imminent
death, they will be most honest about their beliefs concerning God
and theology. He also felt his ideas would be attacked by the clergy
of the revealed religions, which they were and still are, and the fact
that he wrote them when he did would strengthen his arguments put
forth in this book.
During the French Revolution he went against popular senti-
ment and publicly admonished the provisional government not to ex-
ecute the King and Queen. He said the titles and positions should be
abolished, but the lives of the persons who hold the positions should
be spared. This didn’t sit well with those in power who were jealous
of him. He was aware of his powerful enemies, as well as the guillo-
tines they were making frequent use of on a daily basis. Believing he
Thomas Paine vii
would soon meet the same fate as thousands of others the govern-
ment didn’t approve of, he began writing the first part of The Age of
Reason.
At about 4:00 a.m. on December 29, 1793 Thomas Paine was ar-
rested by French authorities. The reluctant guards and interpreter
went through his papers. After examining the manuscript of The Age
of Reason, the interpreter said, “It is an interesting work; it will do
much good.” Paine was then taken to the prison of the Luxembourg.
Paine wrote concerning an illness he contracted while in prison.
“. . . I was seized with a fever that in its progress had every symptom
of becoming mortal, and from the effects of which I am not recov-
ered. It was then that I remembered with renewed satisfaction, and
congratulated myself most sincerely, on having written the former
part of The Age of Reason. I had but little expectation of surviving,
and those about me had less. I know, therefore, by experience, the
conscientious trial of my own principles.”
After Paine spent ten months and nine days in the Luxembourg
prison, James Monroe, who was the new American Minister to
France, won the release of Thomas Paine. Paine was very ill due to
the inhumane conditions he was subjected to in prison. James Mon-
roe and his wife Elizabeth took him in and nursed him back to health.
While a guest of the Monroe family, he wrote the second part of The
Age of Reason. This time he had a Bible in his possession and used it
most skillfully against itself. Irate religious leaders tried, all in vain,
to refute the solid and sound arguments Thomas Paine unleashed
against superstition. It seems what upset the clergy and their political
partners the most was his bringing Deism to the masses of people.
After Thomas Paine, Deism was no longer just an intellectual parlor
topic. However, the powers that be prevailed by slanderous sermons
of damnation against Mr. Paine and all Deists. He was viciously and
unreasonably attacked not only from pulpits around the world, but
also from the press. In particular, the Federalist press attacked him
and his good friend and fellow Deist Thomas Jefferson, who was
running for the presidency. He was hanged in effigy by good Chris-
tians the world over, and in England The Age of Reason was banned
as blasphemy and the government prosecuted a bookseller who
carried the work.
viii The Age of Reason
When he returned to America, a nation which in all probability

would not exist without his selfless and heroic efforts, Paine was vil-
ified by almost everyone. People threatened him, mocked him, and
some attempted to ostracize him. They did everything except suc-
cessfully counter his arguments against revealed religion!
Elihu Palmer, a blind ex-Presbyterian minister, published a De-

ist monthly called The Prospect, or View of the Moral World. He
printed many essays written by his friend Thomas Paine in this jour-
nal, some of which came from works Mr. Paine intended for a third
part of The Age of Reason. This edition of The Age of Reason con-
tains not only this third part, but also all of his essays and correspon-
dence that deal with topics such as God, Deism, Christianity, etc.
After giving everything he had to America, France, and in fact

to all humanity in the most altruistic way, Thomas Paine died. His
friend Clio Rickman wrote concerning his death, “On the eighth of
June, 1809, about nine in the morning, he placidly, and almost with-
out a struggle, died, as he had lived, a Deist.” Because his public
ideas regarding religion were so radical and in direct opposition to
superstition (superstition equaling all man-made revealed religions
which suppress God-given reason), he died virtually alone. Only
seven people attended his funeral, and the Quakers refused to allow
his burial in a Quaker cemetery, so he was buried on his farm in New
Rochelle, New York. Ten years later a onetime adversary turned ad-
mirer, William Cobbett, dug up his earthly remains and brought them
to England, where they were later lost.
Thomas Paine’s dream of a revolution in religion in which all

the “revealed” religions and Atheism are replaced with Deism has
not died and is not lost. His writings on Deism have touched the
hearts of people in both the camp of “revealed” religion and in Athe-
ism. The World Union of Deists has several former clergy members
who are now active Deists as well as former Agnostics and Atheists.
One famous Atheist who has evolved into a Deist is Antony Flew.
Dr. Flew was an outspoken proponent of Atheism for much of his
life. Due to following the evidence that the designs in Nature con-
tain, in particular in the intelligence dependent working code found
in DNA, in 2004 he publicly stated he is no longer an Atheist but be-
Thomas Paine ix
lieves in God. He makes it very clear he is not a “revealed”

religionist of any type, but he is a Deist.
This book that you now hold in your hands offers you a whole
new world, a real world that is a part of the real Universe. Its uncom-
promising stand on behalf of our God-given reason against the un-
natural and false dogmatic claims of the “revealed” religions and
against Atheism’s unreasonable assertion of an accidental Universe
will awaken the realization in you that we are all immersed in the di-
vinity of Nature that is not dependent on any religion or scripture.
We are all free to think and to act as we think best. We have no need
for clergy of any type to teach us of God and life. We are designed by
our Creator and Friend to be self-sufficient through God’s gift to us
of reason!
Bob Johnson
Founder and Director
World Union of Deists
June 27, 2009
The Age of Reason
Being an Investigation of True
and Fabulous Theology
Part First
TO MY FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA:
PUT the following work under your protection. It contains
I my opinions upon Religion. You will do me the justice to re-
member, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every
Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to
mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself
to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of
changing it.
The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is
Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.
Your affectionate friend and fellow-citizen,
— THOMAS PAINE
Paris, 8th Pluvoise,
Second Year of the French Republic, one and indivisible.
January 27th, O. S. 1794.
THE AUTHOR’S PROFESSION OF FAITH

IT has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my
thoughts upon religion. I am well aware of the difficulties that attend
the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a more ad-
vanced period of life. I intended it to be the last offering I should
Thomas Paine 2
make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the

purity of the motive that induced me to it, could not admit of a ques-
tion, even by those who might disapprove the work.
The circumstance that has now taken place in France of the total
abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of every-
thing appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compul-
sive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but
rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest in the gen-
eral wreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and false
theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology
that is true.
As several of my colleagues and others of my fellow-citizens of
France have given me the example of making their voluntary and in-
dividual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this with
all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man commu-
nicates with itself.
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness be-
yond this life.
I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious du-
ties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make
our fellow-creatures happy.
But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other
things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, de-
clare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing
them.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by
the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by
the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own
mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian
or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to
terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe
otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine.
But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faith-
3 The Age of Reason
ful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbe-

lieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so ex-
press it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has
so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to sub-
scribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has
prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order
to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we
conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?
Soon after I had published the pamphlet “Common Sense,” in
America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the sys-
tem of government would be followed by a revolution in the system
of religion. The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever
it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so ef-
fectually prohibited by pains and penalties, every discussion upon
established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that until the
system of government should be changed, those subjects could not
be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this
should be done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow.
Human inventions and priestcraft would be detected; and man would
return to the pure, unmixed and unadulterated belief of one God, and
no more.
CONCERNING MISSIONS AND REVELATIONS

Every national church or religion has established itself by pre-
tending some special mission from God, communicated to certain in-
dividuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus
Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if
the way to God was not open to every man alike.
Each of those churches show certain books, which they call rev-
elation, or the word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was
given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say that their
Word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say that their
Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven.
Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own
part, I disbelieve them all.
Thomas Paine 4
As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I

proceed further into the subject, offer some other observations on the
word revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion, means some-
thing communicated immediately from God to man.
No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make
such a communication, if He pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a
case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not
revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only.
When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a
fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is
revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and
consequently they are not obliged to believe it.
It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revela-
tion that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing.
Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication – after
this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a
revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to
believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same
manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his
word for it that it was made to him. When Moses told the children of
Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the
hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they
had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no
other authority for it than some historian telling me so. The com-
mandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them; they
contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a
lawgiver, or a legislator, could produce himself, without having re-
course to supernatural intervention.*
When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and
brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the
same kind of hearsay evidence and second-hand authority as the for-
mer. I did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not
to believe it.
* It is, however, necessary to except the declaration which says that God
visits the sins of the fathers upon the children; it is contrary to every prin-
ciple of moral justice. – Author.
5 The Age of Reason
When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said,
or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a
man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told
him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance re-
quired a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we
have not even this - for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such mat-
ter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so - it is
hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon
such evidence.
It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was
given to the story of Jesus Christ being the son of God. He was born
when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the
world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of
such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the
heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods.
It was not a new thing, at that time, to believe a man to have been ce-
lestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a
matter of familiar opinion.
Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with
hundreds: the story, therefore, had nothing in it either new, wonder-
ful, or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then pre-
vailed among the people called Gentiles, or Mythologists, and it was
those people only that believed it.
The Jews who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no
more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never
credited the story.
It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the
Christian church sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A
direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the re-
puted founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then
followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which
was about twenty or thirty thousand: the statue of Mary succeeded
the statue of Diana of Ephesus; the deification of heroes changed
into the canonization of saints; the Mythologists had gods for every-
thing; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything; the
church became as crowded with one, as the Pantheon had been with
the other, and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is lit-
Thomas Paine 6
tle else than the idolatry of the ancient Mythologists, accommodated

to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason
and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.
AN APPRECIATION OF THE CHARACTER OF

JESUS CHRIST, AND HIS HISTORY
Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant
disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous
and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced
was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of mo-
rality had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek
philosophers, many years before; by the Quakers since; and by many
good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.
Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage,
or anything else; not a line of what is called the New Testament is of
his own writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other
people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension,
it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His histori-
ans having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner,
were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first
part of the story must have fallen to the ground.
The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told ex-
ceeds everything that went before it. The first part, that of the mirac-
ulous conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and
therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that
though they might not be credited, they could not be detected. They
could not be expected to prove it, because it was not one of those
things that admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the person of
whom it was told could prove it himself.
But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his as-
cension through the air, is a thing very different as to the evidence it
admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The res-
urrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admit-
ted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a
balloon, or the sun at noon-day, to all Jerusalem at least.
7 The Age of Reason
A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the

proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as
the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that
could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the
ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a
small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced
as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of
the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas
did not believe the resurrection, and, as they say, would not believe
without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither
will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other
person, as for Thomas.
It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The
story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of
fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the au-
thors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be as-
sured that the books in which the account is related were written by
the persons whose names they bear; the best surviving evidence we
now have respecting that affair is the Jews. They are regularly de-
scended from the people who lived in the times this resurrection and
ascension is said to have happened, and they say, it is not true. It has
long appeared to me a strange inconsistency to cite the Jews as a
proof of the truth of the story. It is just the same as if a man were to
say, I will prove the truth of what I have told you by producing the
people who say it is false.
That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was cruci-
fied, which was the mode of execution at that day, are historical rela-
tions strictly within the limits of probability. He preached most
excellent morality and the equality of man; but he preached also
against the corruptions and avarice of the Jewish priests, and this
brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of
priesthood.
The accusation which those priests brought against him was that
of sedition and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which
the Jews were then subject and tributary; and it is not improbable that
the Roman government might have some secret apprehensions of the
effects of his doctrine, as well as the Jewish priests; neither is it im-
Thomas Paine 8
probable that Jesus Christ had in contemplation the delivery of the

Jewish nation from the bondage of the Romans. Between the two,
however, this virtuous reformer and revolutionist lost his life.
FABULOUS BASES OF CHRISTIANITY

It is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another case
I am going to mention, that the Christian Mythologists, calling them-
selves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which, for ab-
surdity and extravagance, is not exceeded by anything that is to be
found in the mythology of the ancients.
The ancient Mythologists tell us that the race of Giants made
war against Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks
against him at one throw; that Jupiter defeated him with thunder, and
confined him afterward under Mount Etna, and that every time the
Giant turns himself Mount Etna belches fire.
It is here easy to see that the circumstance of the mountain, that
of its being a volcano, suggested the idea of the fable; and that the fa-
ble is made to fit and wind itself up with that circumstance.
The Christian Mythologists tell us that their Satan made war
against the Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him after-
ward, not under a mountain, but in a pit. It is here easy to see that the
first fable suggested the idea of the second; for the fable of Jupiter
and the Giants was told many hundred years before that of Satan.
Thus far the ancient and the Christian Mythologists differ very
little from each other. But the latter have contrived to carry the matter
much farther.
They have contrived to connect the fabulous part of the story of
Jesus Christ with the fable originating from Mount Etna; and in order
to make all the parts of the story tie together, they have taken to their
aid the traditions of the Jews; for the Christian mythology is made up
partly from the ancient mythology and partly from the Jewish
traditions.
The Christian Mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit,
were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable.
He is then introduced into the Garden of Eden, in the shape of a snake
or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation
9 The Age of Reason
with Eve, who is no way surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue
of this tete-a-tete is that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eat-
ing of that apple damns all mankind.
After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one
would have supposed that the Church Mythologists would have been
kind enough to send him back again to the pit; or, if they had not done
this, that they would have put a mountain upon him (for they say that
their faith can remove a mountain), or have put him under a moun-
tain, as the former mythologists had done, to prevent his getting
again among the women and doing more mischief. But instead of this
they leave him at large, without even obliging him to give his parole-
the secret of which is, that they could not do without him; and after
being at the trouble of making him, they bribed him to stay. They
promised him ALL the Jews, ALL the Turks by anticipation,
nine-tenths of the world beside, and Mahomet into the bargain. After
this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the Christian Mythology?
Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in Heaven, in
which none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded –
put Satan into the pit – let him out again – giving him a triumph over
the whole creation – damned all mankind by the eating of an apple,
these Christian Mythologists bring the two ends of their fable to-
gether. They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ,
to be at once both God and Man, and also the Son of God, celestially
begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in
her longing had eaten an apple.
EXAMINATION OF THE PRECEDING BASES

Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absur-
dity, or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves
merely to an examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a
story more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with His
wisdom, more contradictory to His power, than this story is.
In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors
were under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call Satan,
a power equally as great, if not greater than they attribute to the Al-
mighty. They have not only given him the power of liberating him-
self from the pit, after what they call his fall, but they have made that
Thomas Paine 10
power increase afterward to infinity. Before this fall they represent

him only as an angel of limited existence, as they represent the rest.
After his fall, he becomes, by their account, omnipresent. He exists
everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity
of space.
Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as
defeating, by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation, all
the power and wisdom of the Almighty. They represent him as hav-
ing compelled the Almighty to the direct necessity either of surren-
dering the whole of the creation to the government and sovereignty
of this Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by coming down
upon earth, and exhibiting Himself upon a cross in the shape of a
man.
Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is,
had they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit
himself on a cross, in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his
new transgression, the story would have been less absurd – less con-
tradictory. But instead of this, they make the transgressor triumph,
and the Almighty fall.
That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived
very good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime), is what
I have no doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe it,
and they would have believed anything else in the same manner.
There are also many who have been so enthusiastically enrap-
tured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in
making a sacrifice of Himself, that the vehemence of the idea has
forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and
profaneness of the story. The more unnatural anything is, the more it
is capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration.
But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do
they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a
fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born – a world
furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the
sun, that pour down the rain, and fill the earth with abundance?
Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still
goes on.
11 The Age of Reason
Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, noth-
ing to us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than
tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intol-
erable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator?
I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would
be paying too great a compliment to their credulity to forbear it on
their account; the times and the subject demand it to be done. The
suspicion that the theory of what is called the Christian Church is
fabulous is becoming very extensive in all countries; and it will be a
consolation to men staggering under that suspicion, and doubting
what to believe and what to disbelieve, to see the object freely inves-
tigated. I therefore pass on to an examination of the books called the
Old and New Testament.
EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

These books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revela-
tion (which, by the bye, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation
to explain it), are, we are told, the Word of God. It is, therefore,
proper for us to know who told us so, that we may know what credit
to give to the report. The answer to this question is, that nobody can
tell, except that we tell one another so. The case, however, histori-
cally appears to be as follows:
When the Church Mythologists established their system, they

collected all the writings they could find, and managed them as they
pleased. It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of
the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and New Testa-
ment are in the same state in which those collectors say they found
them, or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up.
Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of

the collection they had made should be the WORD OF GOD, and
which should not. They rejected several; they voted others to be
doubtful, such as the books called the Apocrypha; and those books
which had a majority of votes, were voted to be the word of God.
Had they voted otherwise, all the people, since calling themselves
Thomas Paine 12
Christians, had believed otherwise – for the belief of the one co-
mes from the vote of the other. Who the people were that did all this,
we know nothing of; they called themselves by the general name of
the Church, and this is all we know of the matter.
As we have no other external evidence or authority for believing
these books to be the Word of God than what I have mentioned,
which is no evidence or authority at all, I come in the next place to
examine the internal evidence contained in the books themselves.
In the former part of this essay, I have spoken of revelation; I
now proceed further with that subject, for the purpose of applying it
to the books in question.
Revelation is a communication of something which the person
to whom that thing is revealed did not know before. For if I have
done a thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have
done it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it.
Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon
earth, of which man himself is the actor or the witness; and conse-
quently all the historical and anecdotal parts of the Bible, which is al-
most the whole of it, is not within the meaning and compass of the
word revelation, and, therefore, is not the Word of God.
When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did
so (and whether he did or not is nothing to us), or when he visited his
Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation
to do with these things? If they were facts, he could tell them himself,
or his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if they were worth
either telling or writing; and if they were fictions, revelation could
not make them true; and whether true or not, we are neither the better
nor the wiser for knowing them. When we contemplate the immen-
sity of that Being who directs and governs the incomprehensible
WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a
part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the Word of
God.
As to the account of the Creation, with which the Book of Gene-
sis opens, it has all the appearance of being a tradition which the Isra-
elites had among them before they came into Egypt; and after their
departure from that country they put it at the head of their history,
without telling (as it is most probable) that they did not know how
they came by it. The manner in which the account opens shows it to
be traditionary. It begins abruptly; it is nobody that speaks; it is no-
body that hears; it is addressed to nobody; it has neither first, second,
nor third person; it has every criterion of being a tradition; it has no
voucher. Moses does not take it upon himself by introducing it with
the formality that he uses on other occasions, such as that of saying,
“The Lord spake unto Moses, saying.”
Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the Creation, I am
at a loss to conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such
subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated
among the Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science,
and particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the si-
lence and caution that Moses observes in not authenticating the ac-
count, is a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it.
The case is, that every nation of people has been world-makers,
and the Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-mak-
ing as any of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might not
choose to contradict the tradition. The account, however, is harm-
less; and this is more than can be said of many other parts of the Bi-
ble.*
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debauch-
eries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictive-
ness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more
consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of
God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and bru-
talize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest ev-
erything that is cruel.
We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but
what deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to
the miscellaneous parts of the Bible. In the anonymous publications,
the Psalms, and the Book of Job, more particularly in the latter, we
find a great deal of elevated sentiment reverentially expressed of the
power and benignity of the Almighty; but they stand on no higher
* When Paine refers to the Bible he means the Hebrew Bible/Old Testa-
ment. Editor.
Thomas Paine 14
rank than many other compositions on similar subjects, as well be-

fore that time as since.
The Proverbs which are said to be Solomon’s, though most
probably a collection (because they discover a knowledge of life
which his situation excluded him from knowing), are an instructive
table of ethics. They are inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the
Spaniards, and not more wise and economical than those of the
American Franklin.
All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally known by the
name of the Prophets, are the works of the Jewish poets and itinerant
preachers, who mixed poetry, anecdote, and devotion together – and
those works still retain the air and style of poetry, though in transla-
tion.
There is not, throughout the whole book called the Bible, any
word that describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that de-
scribes what we call poetry.1 The case is, that the word prophet, to
which latter times have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for
poet, and the word prophesying meant the art of making poetry. It
also meant the art of playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of
music.
We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns – of
prophesying with harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with ev-
ery other instrument of music then in fashion. Were we now to speak
of prophesying with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the expression
would have no meaning or would appear ridiculous, and to some
people contemptuous, because we have changed the meaning of the
word.
We are told of Saul being among the prophets, and also that he
prophesied; but we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he
prophesied. The case is, there was nothing to tell; for these prophets
were a company of musicians and poets, and Saul joined in the con-
cert, and this was called prophesying.
The account given of this affair in the book called Samuel is,
that Saul met a company of prophets; a whole company of them!
coming down with a psaltery, a tabret, a pipe and a harp, and that they
prophesied, and that he prophesied with them. But it appears after-
ward, that Saul prophesied badly; that is, he performed his part
badly; for it is said, that an “evil spirit from God”* came upon Saul,
and he prophesied.
Now, were there no other passage in the book called the Bible
than this, to demonstrate to us that we have lost the original meaning
of the word prophesy, and substituted another meaning in its place,
this alone would be sufficient; for it is impossible to use and apply
the word prophesy, in the place it is here used and applied, if we give
to it the sense which latter times have affixed to it. The manner in
which it is here used strips it of all religious meaning, and shows that
a man might then be a prophet, or he might prophesy, as he may now
be a poet or a musician, without any regard to the morality or immo-
rality of his character. The word was originally a term of science,
promiscuously applied to poetry and to music, and not restricted to
any subject upon which poetry and music might be exercised.
Deborah and Barak are called prophets, not because they pre-
dicted anything, but because they composed the poem or song that
bears their name, in celebration of an act already done. David is
ranked among the prophets, for he was a musician, and was also re-
puted to be (though perhaps very erroneously) the author of the
Psalms. But Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not called prophets; it
does not appear from any accounts we have that they could either
sing, play music, or make poetry.
We are told of the greater and the lesser prophets. They might as
well tell us of the greater and the lesser God; for there cannot be de-
grees in prophesying consistently with its modern sense. But there
are degrees in poetry, and therefore the phrase is reconcilable to the
case, when we understand by it the greater and the lesser poets.
It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations
upon what those men, styled prophets, have written. The axe goes at
* As those men who call themselves divines and commentators are very
fond of puzzling one another, I leave them to contest the meaning of the
first part of the phrase, that of an evil spirit from God. I keep to my text – I
keep to the meaning of the word prophesy. – Author.
Thomas Paine 16
once to the root, by showing that the original meaning of the word
has been mistaken and consequently all the inferences that have been
drawn from those books, the devotional respect that has been paid to
them, and the labored commentaries that have been written upon
them, under that mistaken meaning, are not worth disputing about. In
many things, however, the writings of the Jewish poets deserve a
better fate than that of being bound up, as they now are with the trash
that accompanies them, under the abused name of the Word of God.
If we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must
necessarily affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the
utter impossibility of any change taking place, by any means or acci-
dent whatever, in that which we would honor with the name of the
word of God; and therefore the word of God cannot exist in any writ-
ten or human language.
The continually progressive change to which the meaning of
words is subject, the want of a universal language which renders
translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again sub-
ject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibil-
ity of willful alteration, are of themselves evidences that the human
language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the
word of God. The Word of God exists in something else.
Did the book called the Bible excel in purity of ideas and expres-
sion all the books that are now extant in the world, I would not take it
for my rule of faith, as being the Word of God, because the possibil-
ity would nevertheless exist of my being imposed upon. But when I
see throughout the greater part of this book scarcely anything but a
history of the grossest vices and a collection of the most paltry and
contemptible tales, I cannot dishonor my Creator by calling it by his
name.
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

Thus much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New
Testament. The New Testament! that is, the new will, as if there
could be two wills of the Creator.
Had it been the object or the intention of Jesus Christ to establish
a new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system him-
self, or procured it to be written in his life-time. But there is no publi-
cation extant authenticated with his name. All the books called the
New Testament were written after his death. He was a Jew by birth
and by profession; and he was the Son of God in like manner that ev-
ery other person is – for the Creator is the Father of All.
The first four books, called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do
not give a history of the life of Jesus Christ, but only detached anec-
dotes of him. It appears from these books that the whole time of his
being a preacher was not more than eighteen months; and it was dur-
ing this short time that these men became acquainted with him. They
make mention of him at the age of twelve years, sitting, they say,
among the Jewish doctors, asking and answering them questions. As
this was several years before their acquaintance with him began, it is
most probable they had this anecdote from his parents.
From this time there is no account of him for about sixteen
years. Where he lived, or how he employed himself during this inter-
val, is not known. Most probably he was working at his father’s
trade, which was that of a carpenter. It does not appear that he had
any school education, and the probability is, that he could not write,
for his parents were extremely poor, as appears from their not being
able to pay for a bed when he was born.
It is somewhat curious that the three persons whose names are
the most universally recorded, were of very obscure parentage. Mo-
ses was a foundling; Jesus Christ was born in a stable; and Mahomet
was a mule driver. The first and last of these men were founders of
different systems of religion; but Jesus Christ founded no new sys-
tem. He called men to the practice of moral virtues and the belief of
one God. The great trait in his character is philanthropy.
The manner in which he was apprehended shows that he was not
much known at that time; and it shows also, that the meetings he then
held with his followers were in secret; and that he had given over or
suspended preaching publicly. Judas could not otherwise betray him
than by giving information where he was, and pointing him out to the
officers that went to arrest him; and the reason for employing and
paying Judas to do this could arise only from the cause already men-
tioned, that of his not being much known and living concealed.
The idea of his concealment not only agrees very ill with his re-
puted divinity, but associates with it something of pusillanimity; and
Thomas Paine 18
his being betrayed, or in other words, his being apprehended, on the

information of one of his followers, shows that he did not intend to
be apprehended, and consequently that he did not intend to be
crucified.
The Christian Mythologists tell us that Christ died for the sins of
the world, and that he came on purpose to die. Would it not then have
been the same if he had died of a fever or of the small-pox, of old age,
or of anything else?
The declaratory sentence which, they say, was passed upon
Adam, in case he eat of the apple, was not, that thou shall surely be
crucified, but thou shalt surely die – the sentence of death, and not
the manner of dying. Crucifixion, therefore, or any other particular
manner of dying, made no part of the sentence that Adam was to suf-
fer, and consequently, even upon their own tactics, it could make no
part of the sentence that Christ was to suffer in the room of Adam. A
fever would have done as well as a cross, if there was any occasion
for either.
The sentence of death, which they tell us was thus passed upon
Adam must either have meant dying naturally, that is, ceasing to live,
or have meant what these Mythologists call damnation; and, conse-
quently, the act of dying on the part of Jesus Christ, must, according
to their system, apply as a prevention to one or other of these two
things happening to Adam and to us.
That it does not prevent our dying is evident, because we all die;
and if their accounts of longevity be true, men die faster since the
crucifixion than before; and with respect to the second explanation
(including with it the natural death of Jesus Christ as a substitute for
the eternal death or damnation of all mankind), it is impertinently
representing the Creator as coming off, or revoking the sentence, by
a pun or a quibble upon the word death.
That manufacturer of quibbles, St. Paul, if he wrote the books
that bear his name, has helped this quibble on by making another
quibble upon the word Adam. He makes there to be two Adams; the
one who sins in fact, and suffers by proxy; the other who sins by
proxy, and suffers in fact. A religion thus interlarded with quibble,
subterfuge, and pun has a tendency to instruct its professors in the
practice of these arts. They acquire the habit without being aware of
the cause.
If Jesus Christ was the being which those Mythologists tell us he
was, and that he came into this world to suffer, which is a word they
sometimes use instead of to die, the only real suffering he could have
endured, would have been to live. His existence here was a state of
exilement or transportation from Heaven, and the way back to his
original country was to die. In fine, everything in this strange system
is the reverse of what it pretends to be. It is the reverse of truth, and I
become so tired of examining into its inconsistencies and absurdi-
ties, that I hasten to the conclusion of it, in order to proceed to
something better.
How much or what parts of the books called the New Testament,
were written by the persons whose names they bear, is what we can
know nothing of; neither are we certain in what language they were
originally written. The matters they now contain may be classed un-
der two heads – anecdote and epistolary correspondence.
The four books already mentioned, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John, are altogether anecdotal. They relate events after they had
taken place. They tell what Jesus Christ did and said, and what others
did and said to him; and in several instances they relate the same
event differently. Revelation is necessarily out of the question with
respect to those books; not only because of the disagreement of the
writers, but because revelation cannot be applied to the relating of
facts by the person who saw them done, nor to the relating or record-
ing of any discourse or conversation by those who beard it. The book
called the Acts of the Apostles (an anonymous work) belongs also to
the anecdotal part.
All the other parts of the New Testament, except the book of
enigmas called the Revelation, are a collection of letters under the
name of epistles; and the forgery of letters has been such a common
practice in the world, that the probability is at least equal, whether
they are genuine or forged.
One thing, however, is much less equivocal, which is, that out of
the matters contained in those books, together with the assistance of
some old stories, the Church has set up a system of religion very con-
tradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has
Thomas Paine 20
set up a religion of pomp and revenue, in pretended imitation of a

person whose life was humility and poverty.
The invention of purgatory, and of the releasing of souls there-
from by prayers bought of the church with money; the selling of par-
dons, dispensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws, without
bearing that name or carrying that appearance.
But the case nevertheless is, that those things derive their origin
from the paroxysm of the crucifixion and the theory deduced there-
from, which was that one person could stand in the place of another,
and could perform meritorious service for him.
The probability, therefore, is that the whole theory or doctrine of
what is called the redemption (which is said to have been accom-
plished by the act of one person in the room of another) was origi-
nally fabricated on purpose to bring forward and build all those
secondary and pecuniary redemptions upon; and that the passages in
the books, upon which the idea or theory of redemption is built, have
been manufactured and fabricated for that purpose.
Why are we to give this Church credit when she tells us that
those books are genuine in every part, any more than we give her
credit for everything else she has told us, or for the miracles she says
she has performed? That she could fabricate writings is certain, be-
cause she could write; and the composition of the writings in ques-
tion is of that kind that anybody might do it; and that she did fabricate
them is not more inconsistent with probability than that she could tell
us, as she has done, that she could and did work miracles.
Since, then, no external evidence can, at this long distance of
time, be produced to prove whether the Church fabricated the doc-
trine called redemption or not (for such evidence, whether for or
against, would be subject to the same suspicion of being fabricated),
the case can only be referred to the internal evidence which the thing
carries of itself; and this affords a very strong presumption of its be-
ing a fabrication. For the internal evidence is that the theory or doc-
trine of redemption has for its basis an idea of pecuniary justice, and
not that of moral justice.
If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to
put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and
pay it for me; but if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of

the case is changed; moral justice cannot take the innocent for the
guilty, even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to
do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing
itself; it is then no longer justice, it is indiscriminate revenge. This
single reflection will show, that the doctrine of redemption is
founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt
which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corre-
sponds again with the system of second redemption, obtained
through the means of money given to the Church for pardons, the
probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the
other of those theories; and that, in truth there is no such thing as re-
demption – that it is fabulous, and that man stands in the same rela-
tive condition with his Maker as he ever did stand since man existed,
and that it is his greatest consolation to think so.
Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and mor-
ally than by any other system; it is by his being taught to contemplate
himself as an outlaw, as an outcast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one
thrown, as it were, on a dunghill at an immense distance from his
Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping and cring-
ing to intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous
disregard for everything under the name of religion, or becomes in-
different, or turns what he calls devout.
In the latter case, he consumes his life in grief, or the affectation
of it; his prayers are reproaches; his humility is ingratitude; he calls
himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings
of life by the thankless name of vanities; he despises the choicest gift
of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON; and having endeavored to
force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason re-
volts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give
reason to himself.
Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility and this con-
tempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions;
he finds fault with everything; his selfishness is never satisfied; his
ingratitude is never at an end.
He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do, even in
the government of the universe; he prays dictatorially; when it is
Thomas Paine 22
sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine;
he follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is
the amount of all his prayers but an attempt to make the Almighty
change His mind, and act otherwise than He does? It is as if he were
to say: Thou knowest not so well as I.
DEFINING THE TRUE REVELATION

But some, perhaps, will say: Are we to have no Word of God –
no revelation? I answer, Yes; there is a Word of God; there is a reve-
lation.
THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD and
it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter,
that God speaketh universally to man.
Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore inca-
pable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal in-
formation. The idea that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say,
the glad tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth to the other,
is consistent only with the ignorance of those who knew nothing of
the extent of the world, and who believed, as those world-saviors be-
lieved, and continued to believe for several centuries (and that in
contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience
of navigators), that the earth was flat like a trencher, and that man
might walk to the end of it.
But how was Jesus Christ to make anything known to all na-
tions? He could speak but one language which was Hebrew, and
there are in the world several hundred languages. Scarcely any two
nations speak the same language, or understand each other; and as to
translations, every man who knows anything of languages knows
that it is impossible to translate from one language to another, not
only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mis-
taking the sense; and besides all this, the art of printing was wholly
unknown at the time Christ lived.
It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any
end be equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be
accomplished. It is in this that the difference between finite and infi-
nite power and wisdom discovers itself. Man frequently fails in ac-
complishing his ends, from a natural inability of the power to the
purpose, and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power

properly. But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as
man faileth. The means it uses are always equal to the end; but hu-
man language, more especially as there is not an universal language,
is incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable
and uniform information, and therefore it is not the means that God
uses in manifesting himself universally to man.
It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of
a Word of God can unite. The Creation speaks a universal language,
independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and
various as they may be. It is an ever-existing original, which every
man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it can-
not be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not
depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it
publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to
all nations and to all worlds; and this Word of God reveals to man all
that is necessary for man to know of God.
Do we want to contemplate His power? We see it in the immen-
sity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate His wisdom? We see
it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is
governed. Do we want to contemplate His munificence? We see it in
the abundance with which He fills the earth. Do we want to contem-
plate His mercy? We see it in His not withholding that abundance
even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is?
Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand
might make, but the Scripture called the creation.
CONCERNING GOD, AND THE LIGHTS

CAST ON HIS EXISTENCE AND
ATTRIBUTES BY THE BIBLE
The only idea man can affix to the name of God is that of a first
cause, the cause of all things. And incomprehensible and difficult as
it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief
of it from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it.
It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have
no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult be-
yond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we
Thomas Paine 24
call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there

shall be no time.
In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in it-
self the internal evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an
evidence to himself that he did not make himself; neither could his
father make himself, nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither
could any tree, plant, or animal make itself; and it is the conviction
arising from this evidence that carries us on, as it were, by necessity
to the belief of a first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally dif-
ferent to any material existence we know of, and by the power of
which all things exist; and this first cause man calls God.
It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God.
Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding
anything; and, in this case, it would be just as consistent to read even
the book called the Bible to a horse as to a man. How, then, is it that
those people pretend to reject reason?
Almost the only parts in the book called the Bible that convey to
us any idea of God are some chapters in Job and the 19th Psalm; I
recollect no other. Those parts are true deistical compositions, for
they treat of the Deity through His works. They take the book of cre-
ation as the Word of God, they refer to no other book, and all the in-
ferences they make are drawn from that volume.
I insert in this place the 19th Psalm, as paraphrased into English
verse by Addison. I recollect not the prose, and where I write this I
have not the opportunity of seeing it.
“The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great original proclaim.
The unwearied sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator’s power display;
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty hand.
“Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the list’ning earth
Repeats the story of her birth;

While all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets, in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
“What, though in solemn silence all
Move round this dark, terrestrial ball?
What though no real voice, or sound,
Amidst their radiant orbs be found?
In reason’s ear they all rejoice
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing, as they shine,
The hand that made us is divine.”
What more does man want to know than that the hand or power
that made these things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this
with the force it is impossible to repel, if he permits his reason to act,
and his rule of moral life will follow of course.
The allusions in Job have, all of them, the same tendency with
this Psalm; that of deducing or proving a truth that would be other-
wise unknown, from truths already known.
I recollect not enough of the passages in Job to insert them cor-
rectly; but there is one occurs to me that is applicable to the subject I
am speaking upon. “Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst
thou find out the Almighty to perfection?”
I know not how the printers have pointed this passage, for I keep
no Bible; but it contains two distinct questions that admit of distinct
answers.
First, – Canst thou by searching find out God? Yes because, in
the first place, I know I did not make myself, and yet I have exis-
tence; and by searching into the nature of other things, I find that no
other thing could make itself; and yet millions of other things exist;
therefore it is, that I know, by positive conclusion resulting from this
search, that there is a power superior to all those things, and that
power is God.
Secondly, – Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? No;
not only because the power and wisdom He has manifested in the
Thomas Paine 26
structure of the creation that I behold is to me incomprehensible, but

because even this manifestation, great as it is, is probably but a small
display of that immensity of power and wisdom by which millions of
other worlds, to me invisible by their distance, were created and
continue to exist.
It is evident that both these questions were put to the reason of
the person to whom they are supposed to have been addressed; and it
is only by admitting the first question to be answered affirmatively,
that the second could follow. It would have been unnecessary and
even absurd, to have put a second question, more difficult than the
first, if the first question had been answered negatively.
The two questions have different objects; the first refers to the
existence of God, the second to his attributes; reason can discover
the one, but it falls infinitely short in discovering the whole of the
other.
I recollect not a single passage in all the writings ascribed to the
men called apostles that conveys any idea of what God is. Those
writings are chiefly controversial; and the subjects they dwell upon,
that of a man dying in agony on a cross, is better suited to the gloomy
genius of a monk in a cell, by whom it is not impossible they were
written, than to any man breathing the open air of the creation.
The only passage that occurs to me, that has any reference to the
works of God, by which only His power and wisdom can be known,
is related to have been spoken by Jesus Christ as a remedy against
distrustful care. “Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither
do they spin.” This, however, is far inferior to the allusions in Job
and in the 19th Psalm; but it is similar in idea, and the modesty of the
imagery is correspondent to the modesty of the man.
TRUE THEOLOGY AND THAT OF

SUPERSTITION
As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me a species of
Atheism – a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in
a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of
Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is
to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque
body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque
self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a re-
ligious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of
reason into shade.
The effect of this obscurity has been that of turning everything
upside down, and representing it in reverse, and among the revolu-
tions it has thus magically produced, it has made a revolution in
theology.
That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the
whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief
place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom
of God in His works, and is the true theology.
As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study
of human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not
the study of God Himself in the works that He has made, but in the
works or writings that man has made; and it is not among the least of
the mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world, that it
has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a
beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the
hag of superstition.
The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church ad-
mits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they
stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conform-
able to the original system of theology.
The internal evidence of those orations proves to a demonstra-
tion that the study and contemplation of the works of creation, and of
the power and wisdom of God, revealed and manifested in those
works, made a great part in the religious devotion of the times in
which they were written; and it was this devotional study and con-
templation that led to the discovery of the principles upon which
what are now called sciences are established; and it is to the discov-
ery of these principles that almost all the arts that contribute to the
convenience of human life owe their existence.
Every principal art has some science for its parent, though the
person who mechanically performs the work does not always, and
but very seldom, perceive the connection.
Thomas Paine 28
It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human

invention; it is only the application of them that is human. Every sci-
ence has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable
as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man can-
not make principles, he can only discover them.
For example: Every person who looks at an almanac sees an ac-
count when an eclipse will take place, and he sees also that it never
fails to take place according to the account there given. This shows
that man is acquainted with the laws by which the heavenly bodies
move. But it would be something worse than ignorance, were any
Church on earth to say that those laws are a human invention.
It would also be ignorance, or something worse, to say that the
scientific principles by the aid of which man is enabled to calculate
and foreknow when an eclipse will take place, are a human inven-
tion. Man cannot invent anything that is eternal and immutable; and
the scientific principles he employs for this purpose must be, and are
of necessity, as eternal and immutable as the laws by which the heav-
enly bodies move, or they could not be used as they are to ascertain
the time when, and the manner how, an eclipse will take place.
The scientific principles that man employs to obtain the fore-
knowledge of an eclipse, or of anything else relating to the motion of
the heavenly bodies, are contained chiefly in that part of science
which is called trigonometry, or the properties of a triangle, which,
when applied to the study of the heavenly bodies, is called astron-
omy; when applied to direct the course of a ship on the ocean, it is
called navigation; when applied to the construction of figures drawn
by rule and compass, it is called geometry; when applied to the con-
struction of plans or edifices, it is called architecture; when applied
to the measurement of any portion of the surface of the earth, it is
called land surveying. In fine, it is the soul of science; it is an eternal
truth; it contains the mathematical demonstration of which man
speaks, and the extent of its uses is unknown.
It may be said that man can make or draw a triangle, and there-
fore a triangle is a human invention.
But the triangle, when drawn, is no other than the image of the
principle; it is a delineation to the eye, and from thence to the mind,
of a principle that would otherwise be imperceptible. The triangle
does not make the principle, any more than a candle taken into a
room that was dark makes the chairs and tables that before were in-
visible. All the properties of a triangle exist independently of the fig-
ure, and existed before any triangle was drawn or thought of by man.
Man had no more to do in the formation of these properties or princi-
ples, than he had to do in making the laws by which the heavenly
bodies move; and therefore the one must have the same Divine origin
as the other.
In the same manner, as it may be said, that man can make a trian-
gle, so also, may it be said, he can make the mechanical instrument
called a lever; but the principle by which the lever acts is a thing dis-
tinct from the instrument, and would exist if the instrument did not; it
attaches itself to the instrument after it is made; the instrument,
therefore, cannot act otherwise than it does act; neither can all the ef-
forts of human invention make it act otherwise – that which, in all
such cases, man calls the effect is no other than the principle itself
rendered perceptible to the senses.
Since, then, man cannot make principles, from whence did he
gain a knowledge of them, so as to be able to apply them, not only to
things on earth, but to ascertain the motion of bodies so immensely
distant from him as all the heavenly bodies are? From whence, I ask,
could he gain that knowledge, but from the study of the true theol-
ogy?
It is the structure of the universe that has taught this knowledge
to man. That structure is an ever-existing exhibition of every princi-
ple upon which every part of mathematical science is founded. The
offspring of this science is mechanics; for mechanics is no other than
the principles of science applied practically.
The man who proportions the several parts of a mill uses the
same scientific principles as if he had the power of constructing a
universe; but as he cannot give to matter that invisible agency by
which all the component parts of the immense machine of the uni-
verse have influence upon each other, and act in motional unison to-
gether, without any apparent contact, and to which man has given the
name of attraction, gravitation, and repulsion, he supplies the place
of that agency by the humble imitation of teeth and cogs.
Thomas Paine 30
All the parts of man’s microcosm must visibly touch; but could
he gain a knowledge of that agency, so as to be able to apply it in
practice, we might then say that another canonical book of the Word
of God had been discovered.
If man could alter the properties of the lever, so also could he al-
ter the properties of the triangle, for a lever (taking that sort of lever
which is called a steelyard, for the sake of explanation) forms, when
in motion, a triangle. The line it descends from (one point of that line
being in the fulcrum), the line it descends to, and the cord of the arc
which the end of the lever describes in the air, are the three sides of a
triangle.
The other arm of the lever describes also a triangle; and the cor-
responding sides of those two triangles, calculated scientifically, or
measured geometrically, and also the sines, tangents, and secants
generated from the angles, and geometrically measured, have the
same proportions to each other, as the different weights have that
will balance each other on the lever, leaving the weight of the lever
out of the case.
It may also be said that man can make a wheel and axis; that he
can put wheels of different magnitudes together, and produce a mill.
Still the case comes back to the same point, which is that he did not
make the principle that gives the wheels those powers. That principle
is as unalterable as in the former cases, or rather it is the same princi-
ple under a different appearance to the eye.
The power that two wheels of different magnitudes have upon
each other is in the same proportion as if the semi-diameter of the
two wheels were joined together and made into that kind of lever I
have described, suspended at the part where the semi-diameters join;
for the two wheels, scientifically considered, are no other than the
two circles generated by the motion of the compound lever.
It is from the study of the true theology that all our knowledge of
science is derived, and it is from that knowledge that all the arts have
originated.
The Almighty Lecturer, by displaying the principles of science
in the structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imita-
tion. It is as if He had said to the inhabitants of this globe that we call
ours, “I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have ren-
dered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts. He
can now provide for his own comfort, AND LEARN FROM MY
MUNIFICENCE TO ALL, TO BE KIND TO EACH OTHER.”
Of what use is it, unless it be to teach man something, that his
eye is endowed with the power of beholding to an incomprehensible
distance, an immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space? Or
of what use is it that this immensity of worlds is visible to man? What
has man to do with the Pleiades, with Orion, with Sirius, with the star
he calls the North Star, with the moving orbs he has named Saturn,
Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, if no uses are to follow from their
being visible? A less power of vision would have been sufficient for
man, if the immensity he now possesses were given only to waste it-
self, as it were, on an immense desert of space glittering with shows.
It is only by contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as
the book and school of science, that he discovers any use in their be-
ing visible to him, or any advantage resulting from his immensity of
when he contemplates the subject of this light, he sees an additional
motive for saying, that nothing was made in vain; for in vain would
be this power of vision if it taught man nothing.
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION,

IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY
As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in theol-
ogy, so also has it made a revolution in the state of learning. That
which is now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning
does not consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowl-
edge of languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language
gives names.
The Greeks were a learned people, but learning with them did
not consist in speaking Greek, any more than in a Roman’s speaking
Latin, or a Frenchman’s speaking French, or an Englishman’s speak-
ing English. From what we know of the Greeks, it does not appear
that they knew or studied any language but their own, and this was
one cause of their becoming so learned: it afforded them more time
to apply themselves to better studies. The schools of the Greeks were
Thomas Paine 32
schools of science and philosophy, and not of languages; and it is in

the knowledge of the things that science and philosophy teach, that
learning consists.
Almost all the scientific learning that now exists came to us
from the Greeks, or the people who spoke the Greek language. It,
therefore, became necessary for the people of other nations who
spoke a different language that some among them should learn the
Greek language, in order that the learning the Greeks had, might be
made known in those nations, by translating the Greek books of sci-
ence and philosophy into the mother tongue of each nation.
The study, therefore, of the Greek language (and in the same
manner for the Latin) was no other than the drudgery business of a
linguist; and the language thus obtained, was no other than the
means, as it were the tools, employed to obtain the learning the
Greeks had. It made no part of the learning itself, and was so distinct
from it, as to make it exceedingly probable that the persons who had
studied Greek sufficiently to translate those works, such, for in-
stance, as Euclid’s Elements, did not understand any of the learning
the works contained.
As there is now nothing new to be learned from the dead lan-
guages, all the useful books being already translated, the languages
are become useless, and the time expended in teaching and learning
them is wasted. So far as the study of languages may contribute to the
progress and communication of knowledge, (for it has nothing to do
with the creation of knowledge), it is only in the living languages
that new knowledge is to be found; and certain it is that, in general, a
youth will learn more of a living language in one year, than of a dead
language in seven, and it is but seldom that the teacher knows much
of it himself.
The difficulty of learning the dead languages does not arise from
any superior abstruseness in the languages themselves, but in their
being dead, and the pronunciation entirely lost. It would be the same
thing with any other language when it becomes dead. The best Greek
linguist that now exists does not understand Greek so well as a Gre-
cian plowman did, or a Grecian milkmaid; and the same for the
Latin, compared with a plowman or milkmaid of the Romans; it
would therefore be advantageous to the state of learning to abolish
the study of the dead languages, and to make learning consist, as it

originally did, in scientific knowledge.
The apology that is sometimes made for continuing to teach the
dead languages is, that they are taught at a time when a child is not
capable of exerting any other mental faculty than that of memory;
but that is altogether erroneous. The human mind has a natural dispo-
sition to scientific knowledge, and to the things connected with it.
The first and favorite amusement of a child, even before it be-
gins to play, is that of imitating the works of man. It builds houses
with cards or sticks; it navigates the little ocean of a bowl of water
with a paper boat, or dams the stream of a gutter and contrives some-
thing which it calls a mill; and it interests itself in the fate of its works
with a care that resembles affection. It afterwards goes to school,
where its genius is killed by the barren study of a dead language, and
the philosopher is lost in the linguist.
But the apology that is now made for continuing to teach the
dead languages, could not be the cause, at first, of cutting down
learning to the narrow and humble sphere of linguistry; the cause,
therefore, must be sought for elsewhere. In all researches of this
kind, the best evidence that can be produced, is the internal evidence
the thing carries with itself, and the evidence of circumstances that
unite with it; both of which, in this case, are not difficult to be
discovered.
Putting then aside, as a matter of distinct consideration, the out-
rage offered to the moral justice of God by supposing Him to make
the innocent suffer for the guilty, and also the loose morality and low
contrivance of supposing Him to change Himself into the shape of a
man, in order to make an excuse to Himself for not executing His
supposed sentence upon Adam – putting, I say, those things aside as
matter of distinct consideration, it is certain that what is called the
Christian system of faith, including in it the whimsical account of the
Creation – the strange story of Eve – the snake and the apple – the
ambiguous idea of a man-god – the corporeal idea of the death of a
god – the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the Christian
system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are all irrec-
oncilable, not only to the divine gift of reason that God hath given to
man, but to the knowledge that man gains of the power and wisdom
Thomas Paine 34
of God, by the aid of the sciences and by studying the structure of the
universe that God has made.
The setters-up, therefore, and the advocates of the Christian sys-
tem of faith could not but foresee that the continually progressive
knowledge that man would gain, by the aid of science, of the power
and wisdom of God, manifested in the structure of the universe and
in all the works of creation, would militate against, and call into
question, the truth of their system of faith; and therefore it became
necessary to their purpose to cut learning down to a size less danger-
ous to their project, and this they effected by restricting the idea of
learning to the dead study of dead languages.
They not only rejected the study of science out of the Christian
schools, but they persecuted it, and it is only within about the last two
centuries that the study has been revived. So late as 1610, Galileo, a
Florentine, discovered and introduced the use of telescopes, and by
applying them to observe the motions and appearances of the heav-
enly bodies, afforded additional means for ascertaining the true
structure of the universe.
Instead of being esteemed for those discoveries, he was sen-
tenced to renounce them, or the opinions resulting from them, as a
damnable heresy. And, prior to that time, Vigilius was condemned to
be burned for asserting the antipodes, or in other words that the earth
was a globe, and habitable in every part where there was land; yet the
truth of this is now too well known even to be told.
If the belief of errors not morally bad did no mischief, it would
make no part of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove them.
There was no moral ill in believing the earth was flat like a trencher,
any more than there was moral virtue in believing that it was round
like a globe; neither was there any moral ill in believing that the Cre-
ator made no other world than this, any more than there was moral
virtue in believing that he made millions, and that the infinity of
space is filled with worlds.
But when a system of religion is made to grow out of a supposed
system of creation that is not true, and to unite itself therewith in a
manner almost inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an entirely
different ground. It is then that errors not morally bad become
fraught with the same mischiefs as if they were. It is then that the
truth, though otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential by

becoming the criterion that either confirms by corresponding evi-
dence, or denies by contradictory evidence, the reality of the religion
itself.
In this view of the case, it is the moral duty of man to obtain ev-
ery possible evidence that the structure of the heavens, or any other
part of creation affords, with respect to systems of religion. But this,
the supporters or partisans of the Christian system, as if dreading the
result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but
persecuted the professors.
Had Newton or Descartes lived three or four hundred years ago,
and pursued their studies as they did, it is most probable they would
not have lived to finish them; and had Franklin drawn lightning from
the clouds at the same time, it would have been at the hazard of expir-
ing for it in the flames.
Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals;
but, however unwilling the partisans of the Christian system may be
to believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true that the age of
ignorance commenced with the Christian system. There was more
knowledge in the world before that period than for many centuries
afterwards; and as to religious knowledge, the Christian system, as
already said was only another species of mythology, and the mythol-
ogy to which it succeeded was a corruption of an ancient system of
theism.2
It is owing to this long interregnum of science, and to no other
cause, that we have now to look through a vast chasm of many hun-
dred years to the respectable characters we call the ancients. Had the
progression of knowledge gone on proportionably with that stock
that before existed, that chasm would have been filled up with char-
acters rising superior in knowledge to each other; and those ancients
we now so much admire would have appeared respectably in the
background of the scene. But the Christian system laid all waste; and
if we take our stand about the beginning of the sixteenth century, we
look back through that long chasm to the times of the ancients, as
over a vast sandy desert, in which not a shrub appears to intercept the
vision to the fertile hills beyond.
Thomas Paine 36
It is an inconsistency scarcely possible to be credited that any-

thing should exist, under the name of a religion, that held it to be irre-
ligious to study and contemplate the structure of the universe that
God has made. But the fact is too well established to be denied. The
event that served more than any other to break the first link in this
long chain of despotic ignorance is that known by the name of the
Reformation by Luther.
From that time, though it does not appear to have made any part
of the intention of Luther, or of those who are called reformers, the
sciences began to revive, and liberality, their natural associate, began
to appear. This was the only public good the Reformation did; for
with respect to religious good, it might as well not have taken place.
The mythology still continued the same, and a multiplicity of Na-
tional Popes grew out of the downfall of the Pope of Christendom.
COMPARING CHRISTIANISM
WITH PANTHEISM
Having thus shown from the internal evidence of things the
cause that produced a change in the state of learning, and the motive
for substituting the study of the dead languages in the place of the
sciences, I proceed, in addition to several observations already made
in the former part of this work, to compare, or rather to confront, the
evidence that the structure of the universe affords with the Christian
system of religion; but, as I cannot begin this part better than by re-
ferring to the ideas that occurred to me at an early part of life, and
which I doubt not have occurred in some degree to almost every per-
son at one time or other, I shall state what those ideas were, and add
thereto such other matter as shall arise out of the subject, giving to
the whole, by way of preface, a short introduction.
My father being of the Quaker profession, it was my good for-
tune to have an exceedingly good moral education, and a tolerable
stock of useful learning. Though I went to the grammar school,* I did
not learn Latin, not only because I had no inclination to learn lan-
guages, but because of the objection the Quakers have against the
* The same school, Thetford in Norfolk that the present counselor Mingay
went to and under the same master. – Author.
books in which the language is taught. But this did not prevent me
from being acquainted with the subject of all the Latin books used in
the school.
The natural bent of my mind was to science. I had some turn,
and I believe some talent, for poetry; but this I rather repressed than
encouraged, as leading too much into the field of imagination. As
soon as I was able I purchased a pair of globes, and attended the
philosophical lectures of Martin and Ferguson, and became after-
ward acquainted with Dr. Bevis, of the society called the Royal Soci-
ety, then living in the Temple, and an excellent astronomer.
I had no disposition for what is called politics. It presented to my
mind no other idea than as contained in the word Jockeyship. When,
therefore, I turned my thoughts toward matter of government, I had
to form a system for myself that accorded with the moral and philo-
sophic principles in which I have been educated. I saw, or at least I
thought I saw, a vast scene opening itself to the world in the affairs of
America, and it appeared to me that unless the Americans changed
the plan they were pursuing with respect to the government of Eng-
land, and declared themselves independent, they would not only in-
volve themselves in a multiplicity of new difficulties, but shut out
the prospect that was then offering itself to mankind through their
means. It was from these motives that I published the work known by
the name of “Common Sense,” which was the first work I ever did
publish; and so far as I can judge of myself, I believe I should never
have been known in the world as an author, on any subject whatever,
had it not been for the affairs of America. I wrote “Common Sense”
the latter end of the year 1775, and published it the first of January,
1776. Independence was declared the fourth of July following.
Any person who has made observations on the state and prog-
ress of the human mind, by observing his own, cannot but have ob-
served that there are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts
– those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of
thinking, and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord. I have
always made it a rule to treat those voluntary visitors with civility,
taking care to examine, as well as I was able, if they were worth en-
tertaining, and it is from them I have acquired almost all the knowl-
edge that I have. As to the learning that any person gains from school
Thomas Paine 38
education, it serves only, like a small capital, to put him in a way of

beginning learning for himself afterward.
Every person of learning is finally his own teacher, the reason of
which is that principles, being a distinct quality to circumstances,
cannot be impressed upon the memory; their place of mental resi-
dence is the understanding and they are never so lasting as when they
begin by conception. Thus much for the introductory part.
From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea and acting
upon it by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the Christian sys-
tem or thought it to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which it was,
but I well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing
a sermon read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee of the
Church, upon the subject of what is called redemption by the death of
the Son of God.
After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and as I was
going down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I re-
volted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself
that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that
killed His son when He could not revenge Himself in any other way,
and as I was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I
could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons.
This was not one of that kind of thoughts that had anything in it
of childish levity; it was to me a serious reflection, arising from the
idea I had that God was too good to do such an action, and also too al-
mighty to be under any necessity of doing it. I believe in the same
manner at this moment; and I moreover believe, that any system of
religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot
be a true system.
It seems as if parents of the Christian profession were ashamed
to tell their children anything about the principles of their religion.
They sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the
goodness of what they call Providence, for the Christian mythology
has five deities – there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy
Ghost, the God Providence, and the Goddess Nature. But the Chris-
tian story of God the Father putting His son to death, or employing
people to do it (for that is the plain language of the story) cannot be
told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make
mankind happier and better is making the story still worse – as if

mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell
him that all this is a mystery is only making an excuse for the
incredibility of it.
How different is this to the pure and simple profession of De-
ism! The true Deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists in
contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in His
works, and in endeavoring to imitate Him in everything moral,
scientifical, and mechanical.
The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true De-
ism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the
Quakers; but they have contracted themselves too much, by leaving
the works of God out of their system. Though I reverence their phi-
lanthropy, I cannot help smiling at the conceit, that if the taste of a
Quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a silent and
drab-colored creation it would have been! Not a flower would have
blossomed its gayeties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.
Quitting these reflections, I proceed to other matters. After I had
made myself master of the use of the globes and of the orrery,3 and
conceived an idea of the infinity of space, and the eternal divisibility
of matter, and obtained at least a general knowledge of what is called
natural philosophy, I began to compare, or, as I have before said, to
confront the eternal evidence those things afford with the Christian
system of faith.
Though it is not a direct article of the Christian system, that this
world that we inhabit is the whole of the habitable creation, yet it is
so worked up therewith, from what is called the Mosaic account of
the Creation, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of
that story, the death of the Son of God, that to believe otherwise, that
is, to believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numer-
ous as what we call stars, renders the Christian system of faith at
once little and ridiculous, and scatters it in the mind like feathers in
the air. The two beliefs cannot be held together in the same mind, and
he who thinks that he believes both, has thought but little of either.
Though the belief of a plurality of worlds was familiar to the an-
cients, it’s only within the last three centuries that the extent and di-
mensions of this globe that we inhabit have been ascertained.
Thomas Paine 40
Several vessels, following the tract of the ocean, have sailed entirely
round the world, as a man may march in a circle, and come round by
the contrary side of the circle to the spot he set out from.
The circular dimensions of our world, in the widest part, as a
man would measure the widest round of an apple or ball, is only
twenty-five thousand and twenty English miles, reckoning
sixty-nine miles and a half to an equatorial degree, and may be sailed
round in the space of about three years.*
A world of this extent may, at first thought, appear to us to be
great; but if we compare it with the immensity of space in which it is
suspended, like a bubble or balloon in the air, it is infinitely less in
proportion than the smallest grain of sand is to the size of the world,
or the finest particle of dew to the whole ocean, and is therefore but
small; and, as will be hereafter shown, is only one of a system of
worlds of which the universal creation is composed.
It is not difficult to gain some faint idea of the immensity of
space in which this and all the other worlds are suspended, if we fol-
low a progression of ideas. When we think of the size or dimensions
of a room, our ideas limit themselves to the walls, and there they
stop; but when our eye or our imagination darts into space, that is,
when it looks upward into what we call the open air, we cannot con-
ceive any walls or boundaries it can have, and if for the sake of rest-
ing our ideas, we suppose a boundary, the question immediately
renews itself, and asks, what is beyond that boundary? and in the
same manner, what is beyond the next boundary? And so on till the
fatigued imagination returns and says, There is no end. Certainly,
then, the Creator was not pent for room when He made this world no
larger than it is, and we have to seek the reason in something else.
If we take a survey of our own world, or rather of this, of which
the Creator has given us the use as our portion in the immense system
of creation, we find every part of it – the earth, the waters, and the air
that surrounds it – filled and, as it were, crowded with life, down
* Allowing a ship to sail, on an average, three miles in an hour, she would

sail entirely round the world in less than one year, if she could sail in a
direct circle; but she is obliged to follow the course of the ocean.
– Author
from the largest animals that we know of to the smallest insects the
naked eye can behold, and from thence to others still smaller, and to-
tally invisible without the assistance of the microscope. Every tree,
every plant, every leaf, serves not only as a habitation but as a world
to some numerous race, till animal existence becomes so exceed-
ingly refined that the effluvia of a blade of grass would be food for
thousands.
Since, then, no part of our earth is left unoccupied, why is it to be
supposed that the immensity of space is a naked void, lying in eternal
waste? There is room for millions of worlds as large or larger than
ours, and each of them millions of miles apart from each other. Hav-
ing now arrived at this point, if we carry our ideas only one thought
further, we shall see, perhaps, the true reason, at least a very good
reason, for our happiness, why the Creator, instead of making one
immense world extending over an immense quantity of space, has
preferred dividing that quantity of matter into several distinct and
separate worlds, which we call planets, of which our earth is one. But
before I explain my ideas upon this subject, it is necessary (not for
the sake of those who already know, but for those who do not) to
show what the system of the universe is.
THE PLAN AND ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE

That part of the universe that is called the solar system (meaning
the system of worlds to which our earth belongs, and of which Sol, or
in English language, the Sun, is the center) consists, besides the Sun,
of six distinct orbs, or planets, or worlds, besides the secondary
called the satellites or moons, of which our earth has one that attends
her in her annual revolution around the Sun, in like manner as the
other satellites or moons attend the planets or worlds to which they
severally belong, as may be seen by the assistance of the telescope.
The Sun is the center, round which those six worlds or planets
revolve at different distances therefrom, and in circles concentric to
each other. Each world keeps constantly in nearly the same track
round the Sun, and continues, at the same time, turning round itself
in nearly an upright position, as a top turns round itself when it is
spinning on the ground, and leans a little sideways.
Thomas Paine 42
It is this leaning of the earth (23.5 degrees) that occasions sum-

mer and winter, and the different length of days and nights. If the
earth turned round itself in a position perpendicular to the plane or
level of the circle it moves in around the Sun, as a top turns round
when it stands erect on the ground, the days and nights would be al-
ways of the same length, twelve hours day and twelve hours night,
and the seasons would be uniformly the same throughout the year.
Every time that a planet (our earth for example) turns round it-
self, it makes what we call day and night; and every time it goes en-
tirely round the Sun it makes what we call a year; consequently our
world turns three hundred and sixty-five times round itself, in going
once round the Sun.*
The names that the ancients gave to those six worlds, and which
are still called by the same names, are Mercury, Venus, this world
that we call ours, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They appear larger to the
eye than the stars, being many million miles nearer to our earth than
any of the stars are. The planet Venus is that which is called the eve-
ning star, and sometimes the morning star, as she happens to set after
or rise before the Sun, which in either case is never more than three
hours.
The Sun, as before said, being the center, the planet or world
nearest the Sun is Mercury; his distance from the Sun is thirty-four
million miles, and he moves round in a circle always at that distance
from the Sun, as a top may be supposed to spin round in the track in
which a horse goes in a mill.
The second world is Venus; she is fifty-seven million miles dis-
tant from the Sun, and consequently moves round in a circle much
greater than that of Mercury. The third world is this that we inhabit,
and which is eighty-eight million miles distant from the Sun, and
consequently moves round in a circle greater than that of Venus.
The fourth world is Mars; he is distant from the Sun one hundred
and thirty-four million miles, and consequently moves round in a cir-
* Those who supposed that the sun went round the earth every 24 hours
made the same mistake in idea that a cook would do in fact, that should
make the fire go round the meat, instead of the meat going round itself
toward the fire. – Author.
cle greater than that of our earth. The fifth is Jupiter; he is distant
from the Sun five hundred and fifty-seven million miles, and conse-
quently moves round in a circle greater than that of Mars.
The sixth world is Saturn; he is distant from the Sun seven hun-
dred and sixty-three million miles, and consequently moves round in
a circle that surrounds the circles, or orbits, of all the other worlds or
planets.
The space, therefore, in the air, or in the immensity of space, that
our solar system takes up for the several worlds to perform their rev-
olutions in round the Sun, is of the extent in a straight line of the
whole diameter of the orbit or circle, in which Saturn moves round
the Sun, which being double his distance from the Sun, is fifteen
hundred and twenty-six million miles and its circular extent is nearly
five thousand million, and its globular contents is almost three thou-
sand five hundred million times three thousand five hundred million
square miles.4
But this, immense as it is, is only one system of worlds. Beyond
this, at a vast distance into space, far beyond all power of calculation,
are the stars called the fixed stars. They are called fixed, because
they have no revolutionary motion, as the six worlds or planets have
that I have been describing. Those fixed stars continue always at the
same distance from each other, and always in the same place, as the
Sun does in the centre of our system. The probability, therefore, is,
that each of these fixed stars is also a Sun, round which another sys-
tem of worlds or planets, though too remote for us to discover, per-
forms its revolutions, as our system of worlds does round our central
Sun.
By this easy progression of ideas, the immensity of space will
appear to us to be filled with systems of worlds, and that no part of
space lies at waste, any more than any part of the globe of earth and
water is left unoccupied.
Having thus endeavored to convey, in a familiar and easy man-
ner, some idea of the structure of the universe, I return to explain
what I before alluded to, namely, the great benefits arising to man in
consequence of the Creator having made a plurality of worlds, such
as our system is, consisting of a central Sun and six worlds, besides
Thomas Paine 44
satellites, in preference to that of creating one world only of a vast

extent.
ADVANTAGES OF LIFE IN A
PLURALITY OF WORLDS
It is an idea I have never lost sight of, that all our knowledge of
science is derived from the revolutions (exhibited to our eye and
from thence to our understanding) which those several planets or
worlds of which our system is composed make in their circuit round
the Sun.
Had, then, the quantity of matter which these six worlds contain
been blended into one solitary globe, the consequence to us would
have been, that either no revolutionary motion would have existed,
or not a sufficiency of it to give to us the idea and the knowledge of
science we now have; and it is from the sciences that all the mechani-
cal arts that contribute so much to our earthly felicity and comfort are
derived.
As, therefore, the Creator made nothing in vain, so also must it
be believed that He organized the structure of the universe in the
most advantageous manner for the benefit of man; and as we see, and
from experience feel, the benefits we derive from the structure of the
universe formed as it is, which benefits we should not have had the
opportunity of enjoying, if the structure, so far as relates to our sys-
tem, had been a solitary globe – we can discover at least one reason
why a plurality of worlds has been made, and that reason calls forth
the devotional gratitude of man, as well as his admiration.
But it is not to us, the inhabitants of this globe, only, that the ben-
efits arising from a plurality of worlds are limited. The inhabitants of
each of the worlds of which our system is composed enjoy the same
opportunities of knowledge as we do. They behold the revolutionary
motions of our earth, as we behold theirs. All the planets revolve in
sight of each other, and, therefore, the same universal school of sci-
ence presents itself to all. Neither does the knowledge stop here. The
system of worlds next to us exhibits, in its revolutions, the same prin-
ciples and school of science to the inhabitants of their system, as our
system does to us, and in like manner throughout the immensity of
space.
Our ideas, not only of the almightiness of the Creator, but of His
wisdom and His beneficence, become enlarged in proportion as we
contemplate the extent and the structure of the universe. The solitary
idea of a solitary world, rolling or at rest in the immense ocean of
space, gives place to the cheerful idea of a society of worlds, so hap-
pily contrived as to administer, even by their motion, instruction to
man. We see our own earth filled with abundance, but we forget to
consider how much of that abundance is owing to the scientific
knowledge the vast machinery of the universe has unfolded.
But, in the midst of those reflections, what are we to think of the
Christian system of faith that forms itself upon the idea of only one
world, and that of no greater extent, as is before shown, than
twenty-five thousand miles? An extent which a man walking at the
rate of three miles an hour, for twelve hours in the day, could he keep
on in a circular direction, would walk entirely round in less than two
years. Alas! what is this to the mighty ocean of space, and the al-
mighty power of the Creator?
From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit
that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on
his protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in
our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an
apple?
And, on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the
boundless creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer?
In this case, the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and
sometimes God Himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel
from world to world, in an endless succession of deaths, with
scarcely a momentary interval of life.
CONCERNING THE MULTIPLICITY

OF RELIGIONS
It has been by rejecting the evidence that the word or works of
God in the creation afford to our senses, and the action of our reason
upon that evidence, that so many wild and whimsical systems of
faith and of religion have been fabricated and set up.
Thomas Paine 46
There may be many systems of religion that, so far from being

morally bad, are in many respects morally good; but there can be but
ONE that is true; and that one necessarily must, as it ever will, be in
all things consistent with the ever-existing word of God that we be-
hold in His works. But such is the strange construction of the Chris-
tian system of faith that every evidence the Heavens afford to man
either directly contradicts it or renders it absurd.
It is possible to believe, and I always feel pleasure in encourag-
ing myself to believe it, that there have been men in the world who
persuade themselves that what is called a pious fraud might, at least
under particular circumstances, be productive of some good. But the
fraud being once established, could not afterward be explained, for it
is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous
necessity of going on.
The persons who first preached the Christian system of faith,
and in some measure combined it with the morality preached by Je-
sus Christ, might persuade themselves that it was better than the hea-
then mythology that then prevailed. From the first preachers the
fraud went on to the second, and to the third, till the idea of its being a
pious fraud became lost in the belief of its being true; and that belief
became again encouraged by the interests of those who made a liveli-
hood by preaching it.
But though such a belief might by such means be rendered al-
most general among the laity, it is next to impossible to account for
the continual persecution carried on by the Church, for several hun-
dred years, against the sciences and against the professors of science,
if the Church had not some record or tradition that it was originally
no other than a pious fraud, or did not foresee that it could not be
maintained against the evidence that the structure of the universe af-
forded.
Having thus shown the irreconcilable inconsistencies between
the real word of God existing in the universe, and that which is called
the Word of God, as shown to us in a printed book that any man might
make, I proceed to speak of the three principal means that have been
employed in all ages, and perhaps in all countries, to impose upon
mankind.
Those three means are mystery, miracle, and prophecy. The two
first are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always
to be suspected.
With respect to mystery, everything we behold is, in one sense, a

mystery to us. Our own existence is a mystery; the whole vegetable
world is a mystery. We cannot account how it is that an acorn, when
put into the ground, is made to develop itself, and become an oak. We
know not how it is that the seed we sow unfolds and multiplies itself,
and returns to us such an abundant interest for so small a capital.
The fact, however, as distinct from the operating cause, is not a
mystery, because we see it, and we know also the means we are to
use, which is no other than putting the seed into the ground. We
know, therefore, as much as is necessary for us to know; and that part
of the operation that we do not know, and which, if we did, we could
not perform, the Creator takes upon himself and performs it for us.
We are, therefore, better off than if we had been let into the secret,
and left to do it for ourselves.
But though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the
word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than ob-
scurity can be applied to light. The God in whom we believe is a God
of moral truth, and not a God of mystery or obscurity. Mystery is the
antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth,
and represents it in distortion. Truth never envelops itself in mystery,
and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its
antagonist, and never of itself.
THE BEST WAY TO SERVE GOD

Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God and the practice of
moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery. The belief of a
God, so far from having anything of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the
most easy, because it arises to us, as is before observed, out of neces-
sity. And the practice of moral truth, or, in other words, a practical
imitation of the moral goodness of God, is no other than our acting
toward each other as he acts benignly toward all.
We cannot serve God in the manner we serve those who cannot
do without such service; and, therefore, the only idea we can have of
serving God, is that of contributing to the happiness of the living cre-
ation that God has made. This cannot be done by retiring ourselves
Thomas Paine 48
from the society of the world and spending a recluse life in selfish
devotion.
The very nature and design of religion, if I may so express it,
prove even to demonstration that it must be free from everything of
mystery, and unencumbered with everything that is mysterious. Re-
ligion, considered as a duty, is incumbent upon every living soul
alike, and, therefore, must be on a level with the understanding and
comprehension of all.
Man does not learn religion as he learns the secrets and myster-
ies of a trade. He learns the theory of religion by reflection. It arises
out of the action of his own mind upon the things which he sees, or
upon what he may happen to hear or to read, and the practice joins it-
self thereto.
When men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems
of religion incompatible with the word or works of God in the cre-
ation, and not only above, but repugnant to human comprehension,
they were under the necessity of inventing or adopting a word that
should serve as a bar to all questions, inquiries and speculation. The
word mystery answered this purpose, and thus it has happened that
religion, which is in itself without mystery, has been corrupted into a
fog of mysteries.
As mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as
an occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the
latter to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo, the other the
legerdemain.
But before going further into this subject, it will be proper to in-
quire what is to be understood by a miracle.
In the same sense that everything may be said to be a mystery, so
also may it be said that everything is a miracle, and that no one thing
is a greater miracle than another. The elephant, though larger, is not a
greater miracle than a mite, nor a mountain a greater miracle than an
atom. To an almighty power, it is no more difficult to make the one
than the other, and no more difficult to make millions of worlds than
to make one.
Everything, therefore, is a miracle, in one sense, whilst in the
other sense, there is no such thing as a miracle. It is a miracle when
compared to our power and to our comprehension, it is not a miracle

compared to the power that performs it; but as nothing in this de-
scription conveys the idea that is affixed to the word miracle, it is
necessary to carry the inquiry further.
Mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws, by which
what they call nature is supposed to act; and that miracle is some-
thing contrary to the operation and effect of those laws; but unless we
know the whole extent of those laws, and of what are commonly
called the powers of nature, we are not able to judge whether any-
thing that may appear to us wonderful or miraculous be within, or be
beyond, or be contrary to, her natural power of acting.
The ascension of man several miles high in the air would have
everything in it that constitutes the idea of a miracle, if it were not
known that a species of air can be generated, several times lighter
than the common atmospheric air, and yet possess elasticity enough
to prevent the balloon in which that light air is enclosed from being
compressed into as many times less bulk by the common air that
surrounds it.
In like manner, extracting flames or sparks of fire from the hu-
man body, as visible as from a steel struck with a flint, and causing
iron or steel to move without any visible agent, would also give the
idea of a miracle, if we were not acquainted with electricity and mag-
netism. So also would many other experiments in natural philoso-
phy, to those who are not acquainted with the subject.
The restoring persons to life who are to appearance dead, as is
practiced upon drowned persons, would also be a miracle, if it were
not known that animation is capable of being suspended without
being extinct.
Besides these, there are performances by sleight-of-hand, and
by persons acting in concert, that have a miraculous appearance,
which when known are thought nothing of. And besides these, there
are mechanical and optical deceptions. There is now an exhibition in
Paris of ghosts or spectres, which, though it is not imposed upon the
spectators as a fact, has an astonishing appearance. As, therefore, we
know not the extent to which either nature or art can go, there is no
positive criterion to determine what a miracle is, and mankind, in
Thomas Paine 50
giving credit to appearances, under the idea of there being miracles,

are subject to be continually imposed upon.
Since, then, appearances are so capable of deceiving, and things
not real have a strong resemblance to things that are, nothing can be
more inconsistent than to suppose that the Almighty would make use
of means such as are called miracles, that would subject the person
who performed them to the suspicion of being an impostor, and the
person who related them to be suspected of lying, and the doctrine
intended to be supported thereby to be suspected as a fabulous
invention.
Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain
belief to any system or opinion to which the name of religion has
been given, that of miracle, however successful the imposition may
have been, is the most inconsistent. For, in the first place, whenever
recourse is had to show, for the purpose of procuring that belief, (for
a miracle, under any idea of the word, is a show), it implies a lame-
ness or weakness in the doctrine that is preached.
And, in the second place, it is degrading the Almighty into the
character of a showman, playing tricks to amuse and make the peo-
ple stare and wonder. It is also the most equivocal sort of evidence
that can be set up; for the belief is not to depend upon the thing called
a miracle, but upon the credit of the reporter who says that he saw it;
and, therefore, the thing, were it true, would have no better chance of
being believed than if it were a lie.
Suppose I were to say, that when I sat down to write this book, a
hand presented itself in the air, took up the pen, and wrote every
word that is herein written; would anybody believe me? Certainly
they would not. Would they believe me a whit the more if the thing
had been a fact? Certainly they would not.
Since, then, a real miracle, were it to happen, would be subject
to the same fate as the falsehood, the inconsistency becomes the
greater of supposing the Almighty would make use of means that
would not answer the purpose for which they were intended, even if
they were real.
If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of
the course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that course
to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such miracle by the

person who said he saw it, it raises a question in the mind very easily
decided, which is, is it more probable that nature should go out of her
course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our
time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe
that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is therefore, at
least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.
The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is
large enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvelous; but it would
have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle, if Jonah had swal-
lowed the whale. In this, which may serve for all cases of miracles,
the matter would decide itself, as before stated, namely, is it more
that a man should have swallowed a whale or told a lie?
But suppose that Jonah had really swallowed the whale, and
gone with it in his belly to Nineveh, and, to convince the people that
it was true, had cast it up in their sight, of the full length and size of a
whale, would they not have believed him to be the devil, instead of a
prophet? Or, if the whale had carried Jonah to Ninevah, and cast him
up in the same public manner, would they not have believed the
whale to have been the devil, and Jonah one of his imps?
The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles, related
in the New Testament, is that of the devil flying away with Jesus
Christ, and carrying him to the top of a high mountain, and to the top
of the highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and promis-
ing to him all the kingdoms of the World. How happened it that he did
not discover America, or is it only with kingdoms that his sooty high-
ness has any interest?
I have too much respect for the moral character of Christ to be-
lieve that he told this whale of a miracle himself; neither is it easy to
account for what purpose it could have been fabricated, unless it
were to impose upon the connoisseurs of Queen Anne’s farthings
and collectors of relics and antiquities; or to render the belief of mir-
acles ridiculous, by outdoing miracles, as Don Quixote outdid chiv-
alry; or to embarrass the belief of miracles, by making it doubtful by
what power, whether of God or of the devil, anything called a mira-
cle was performed. It requires, however, a great deal of faith in the
devil to believe this miracle.
Thomas Paine 52
In every point of view in which those things called miracles can

be placed and considered, the reality of them is improbable and their
existence unnecessary. They would not, as before observed, answer
any useful purpose, even if they were true; for it is more difficult to
obtain belief to a miracle, than to a principle evidently moral without
any miracle.
Moral principle speaks universally for itself. Miracle could be
but a thing of the moment, and seen but by a few; after this it requires
a transfer of faith from God to man to believe a miracle upon man’s
report. Instead, therefore, of admitting the recitals of miracles as evi-
dence of any system of religion being true, they ought to be consid-
ered as symptoms of its being fabulous. It is necessary to the full and
upright character of truth that it rejects the crutch, and it is consistent
with the character of fable to seek the aid that truth rejects. Thus
much for mystery and miracle.
As mystery and miracle took charge of the past and the present,
prophecy took charge of the future and rounded the tenses of faith. It
was not sufficient to know what had been done, but what would be
done. The supposed prophet was the supposed historian of times to
come; and if he happened, in shooting with a long bow of a thousand
years, to strike within a thousand miles of a mark, the ingenuity of
posterity could make it point-blank; and if he happened to be directly
wrong, it was only to suppose, as in the case of Jonah and Nineveh,
that God had repented Himself and changed His mind. What a fool
do fabulous systems make of man!
PROPHETS AND THEIR PROPHECIES

It has been shown, in a former part of this work, that the original
meaning of the words prophet and prophesying has been changed,
and that a prophet, in the sense of the word as now used, is a creature
of modern invention; and it is owing to this change in the meaning of
the words, that the flights and metaphors of the Jewish poets, and
phrases and expressions now rendered obscure by our not being ac-
quainted with the local circumstances to which they applied at the
time they were used, have been erected into prophecies, and made to
bend to explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries,
expounders, and commentators.
Everything unintelligible was prophetical, and everything insig-

nificant was typical. A blunder would have served for a prophecy,
and a dish-clout for a type.
If by a prophet we are to suppose a man to whom the Almighty
communicated some event that would take place in future, either
there were such men or there were not. If there were, it is consistent
to believe that the event so communicated would be told in terms that
could be understood, and not related in such a loose and obscure
manner as to be out of the comprehension of those that heard it, and
so equivocal as to fit almost any circumstance that may happen after-
ward. It is conceiving very irreverently of the Almighty, to suppose
that he would deal in this jesting manner with mankind, yet all the
things called prophecies in the book called the Bible come under this
description.
But it is with prophecy as it is with miracle; it could not answer
the purpose even if it were real. Those to whom a prophecy should be
told, could not tell whether the man prophesied or lied, or whether it
had been revealed to him, or whether he conceited it; and if the thing
that he prophesied, or intended to prophesy, should happen, or some-
thing like it, among the multitude of things that are daily happening,
nobody could again know whether he foreknew it, or guessed at it, or
whether it was accidental.
A prophet, therefore, is a character useless and unnecessary; and
the safe side of the case is to guard against being imposed upon by
not giving credit to such relations.
Upon the whole, mystery, miracle, and prophecy are append-
ages that belong to fabulous and not to true religion. They are the
means by which so many Lo, heres! and Lo, theres! have been spread
about the world, and religion been made into a trade. The success of
one imposter gave encouragement to another, and the quieting salvo
of doing some good by keeping up a pious fraud protected them from
remorse.
RECAPITULATION
Having now extended the subject to a greater length than I first
intended, I shall bring it to a close by abstracting a summary from the
whole.
Thomas Paine 54
First – That the idea or belief of a Word of God existing in print,

or in writing, or in speech, is inconsistent in itself for reasons already
assigned. These reasons, among many others, are the want of a uni-
versal language; the mutability of language; the errors to which
translations are subject: the possibility of totally suppressing such a
word; the probability of altering it, or of fabricating the whole, and
imposing it upon the world.
Secondly – That the Creation we behold is the real and ever-ex-
isting word of God, in which we cannot be deceived. It proclaims His
power, it demonstrates His wisdom, it manifests His goodness and
beneficence.
Thirdly – That the moral duty of man consists in imitating the
moral goodness and beneficence of God, manifested in the creation
toward all his creatures. That seeing, as we daily do, the goodness of
God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practice the
same toward each other; and, consequently, that everything of perse-
cution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty
to animals, is a violation of moral duty.
I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I con-
tent myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the
Power that gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and
manner He pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears
more probable to me that I shall continue to exist hereafter, than that
I should have had existence, as I now have, before that existence
began.
It is certain that, in one point, all the nations of the earth and all
religions agree – all believe in a God; the things in which they dis-
agree, are the redundancies annexed to that belief; and, therefore, if
ever a universal religion should prevail, it will not be by believing
anything new, but in getting rid of redundancies, and believing as
man believed at first. Adam, if ever there were such a man, was cre-
ated a Deist; but in the meantime, let every man follow, as he has a
right to do, the religion and the worship he prefers.
END OF PART FIRST

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
INTERLUDE
hus far I had written on the 28th of December, 1793. In the
T evening I went to the Hotel Philadelphia (formerly White’s
Hotel), Passage des Petits Peres, where I lodged when I came to
Paris, in consequence of being elected a member of the Convention,
but left the lodging about nine months, and taken lodgings in the Rue
Fauxbourg St. Denis, for the sake of being more retired than I could
be in the middle of the town.
Meeting with a company of Americans at the Hotel Philadel-
phia, I agreed to spend the evening with them; and, as my lodging
was distant about a mile and a half, I bespoke a bed at the hotel. The
company broke up about twelve o’clock, and I went directly to bed.
About four in the morning I was awakened by a rapping at my cham-
ber door; when I opened it, I saw a guard, and the master of the hotel
with them. The guard told me they came to put me under arrestation,
and to demand the key of my papers. I desired them to walk in, and I
would dress myself and go with them immediately.
It happened that Achilles Audibert, of Calais, was then in the
hotel; and I desired to be conducted into his room. When we came
there, I told the guard that I had only lodged at the hotel for the night;
that I was printing a work, and that part of that work was at the Mai-
son Bretagne, Rue Jacob; and desired they would take me there first,
which they did.
The printing-office at which the work was printing was near to
the Maison Bretagne, where Colonel Blackden and Joel Barlow, of
the United States of America, lodged; and I had desired Joel Barlow
to compare the proof-sheets with the copy as they came from the
press. The remainder of the manuscript, from page 32 to 76, was at
my lodging. But besides the necessity of my collecting all the parts
of the work together that the publication might not be interrupted by
Thomas Paine 56
my imprisonment, or by any event that might happen to me, it was

highly proper that I should have a fellow-citizen of America with me
during the examination of my papers, as I had letters of correspon-
dence in my possession of the President of Congress General Wash-
ington; the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Congress Mr. Jefferson;
and the late Benjamin Franklin; and it might be necessary for me to
make a proces-verbal to send to Congress. It happened that Joel
Barlow had received only one proof-sheet of the work, which he had
compared with the copy and sent it back to the printing-office.
We then went, in company with Joel Barlow, to my lodging; and
the guard, or commissaires, took with them the interpreter to the
Committee of Surety-General. It was satisfactory to me, that they
went through the examination of my papers with the strictness they
did; and it is but justice that I say, they did it not only with civility,
but with tokens of respect to my character.
I showed them the remainder of the manuscript of the foregoing
work. The interpreter examined it and returned it to me, saying, “It is
an interesting work; it will do much good.” I also showed him an-
other manuscript, which I had intended for the Committee of Public
Safety. It is entitled, “Observations on the Commerce between the
United States of America and France.”
After the examination of my papers was finished, the guard con-
ducted me to the prison of the Luxembourg, where they left me as
they would a man whose undeserved fate they regretted. I offered to
write under the proces-verbal they had made that they had executed
their orders with civility, but they declined it.
THE AGE OF REASON
Part Second
PREFACE
HAVE mentioned in the former part of “The Age of Reason”
I that it had long been my intention to publish my thoughts
upon religion; but that I had originally reserved it to a later period in
life intending it to be the last work I should undertake. The circum-
stances, however, which existed in France in the latter end of the year
1793, determined me to delay it no longer. The just and humane prin-
ciples of the revolution, which philosophy had first diffused, had
been departed from. The idea, always dangerous to society, as it is
derogatory to the Almighty, that priests could forgive sins, though it
seemed to exist no longer, had blunted the feelings of humanity, and
prepared men for the commission of all manner of crimes.
The intolerant spirit of Church persecutions had transferred it-
self into politics; the tribunal styled revolutionary supplied the place
of an inquisition; and the guillotine of the stake. I saw many of my
most intimate friends destroyed, others daily carried to prison, and I
had reason to believe, and had also intimations given me, that the
same danger was approaching myself.
Under these disadvantages, I began the former part of “The Age
of Reason;” I had, besides, neither Bible nor Testament to refer to,
though I was writing against both; nor could I procure any; notwith-
standing which, I have produced a work that no Bible believer,
though writing at his ease, and with a library of Church books about
him, can refute.
Toward the latter end of December of that year a motion was
made and carried to exclude foreigners from the convention. There
were but two in it, Anacharsis Cloots and myself; and I saw I was
particularly pointed at by Bourdon de l’Oise, in his speech on that
motion.
Thomas Paine 58
Conceiving, after this, that I had but a few days of liberty, I sat
down and brought the work to a close as speedily as possible; and I
had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since ap-
peared, before a guard came there, about three in the morning, with
an order signed by the two Committees of public Safety and Surety
General for putting me in arrestation as a foreigner, and conveyed me
to the prison of the Luxembourg.
I contrived, on my way there, to call on Joel Barlow, and I put
the manuscript of the work into his hands: as more safe than in my
possession in prison; and not knowing what might be the fate in
France either of the writer or the work, I addressed it to the protec-
tion of the citizens of the United States.
It is with justice that I say that the guard who executed this order,
and the interpreter of the Committee of General Surety who accom-
panied them to examine my papers, treated me not only with civility,
but with respect. The keeper of the Luxembourg, Bennoit, a man of a
good heart, showed to me every friendship in his power, as did also
all his family, while he continued in that station. He was removed
from it, put into arrestation, and carried before the tribunal upon a
malignant accusation, but acquitted.
After I had been in the Luxembourg about three weeks, the
Americans then in Paris went in a body to the convention to reclaim
me as their countryman and friend; but were answered by the Presi-
dent, Vadier, who was also President of the Committee of
Surety-General, and had signed the order for my arrestation, that I
was born in England. I heard no more, after this, from any person out
of the walls of the prison till the fall of Robespierre, on the 9th of
Thermidor – July 27, 1794.
About two months before this event I was seized with a fever,
that in its progress had every symptom of becoming mortal, and from
the effects of which I am not recovered. It was then that I remem-
bered with renewed satisfaction, and congratulated myself most sin-
cerely, on having written the former part of “The Age of Reason.” I
had then but little expectation of surviving, and those about me had
less. I know, therefore, by experience, the conscientious trial of my
own principles.
I was then with three chamber comrades, Joseph Vanhuele, of

Bruges; Charles Bastini, and Michael Rubyns, of Louvain. The un-
ceasing and anxious attention of these three friends to me, by night
and by day, I remember with gratitude and mention with pleasure. It
happened that a physician (Dr. Graham) and a surgeon (Mr. Bond),
part of the suite of General O’Hara, were then in the Luxembourg. I
ask not myself whether it be convenient to them, as men under the
English government, that I express to them my thanks, but should re-
proach myself if I did not; and also to the physician of the
Luxembourg, Dr. Markoski.
I have some reason to believe, because I cannot discover any
other cause, that this illness preserved me in existence. Among the
papers of Robespierre that were examined and reported upon to the
Convention by a Committee of Deputies, is a note in the hand-writ-
ing of Robespierre, in the following words:
“Demander que Thomas Paine soit decrete d’accusation, pour
l’interet de l’Amerique autant que de la France.”
To demand that a decree of accusation be passed against
Thomas Paine, for the interest of America, as well as of France.
From what cause it was that the intention was not put in execu-
tion I know not, and cannot inform myself, and therefore I ascribe it
to impossibility, on account of that illness.
The Convention, to repair as much as lay in their power the in-
justice I had sustained, invited me publicly and unanimously to re-
turn into the Convention, and which I accepted, to show I could bear
an injury without permitting it to injure my principles or my disposi-
tion. It is not because right principles have been violated that they are
to be abandoned.
I have seen, since I have been at liberty, several publications
written, some in America and some in England, as answers to the for-
mer part of “The Age of Reason.” If the authors of these can amuse
themselves by so doing, I shall not interrupt them. They may write
against the work, and against me, as much as they please; they do me
more service than they intend, and I can have no objection that they
write on. They will find, however, by this second part, without its be-
ing written as an answer to them, that they must return to their work,
Thomas Paine 60
and spin their cobweb over again. The first is brushed away by
accident.
They will now find that I have furnished myself with a Bible and
Testament; and I can say also that I have found them to be much
worse books than I had conceived. If I have erred in anything in the
former part of “The Age of Reason,” it has been by speaking better of
some parts of those books than they have deserved.
I observe that all my opponents resort, more or less, to what they
call Scripture evidence and Bible authority to help them out. They
are so little masters of the subject, as to confound a dispute about au-
thenticity with a dispute about doctrines; I will, however, put them
right, that if they should be disposed to write any more, they may
know how to begin.
— THOMAS PAINE.
October, 1795
AS TO THE OLD
TESTAMENT
t has often been said, that anything may be proved from the
I Bible, but before anything can be admitted as proved by the
Bible, the Bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be
not true, or the truth of it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority, and
cannot be admitted as proof of anything.
It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bi-
ble, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on
the world as a mass of truth and as the word of God; they have dis-
puted and wrangled, and anathematized each other about the sup-
posed meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said
and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing; another
that it meant directly the contrary; and a third, that it meant nei-
ther one nor the other, but something different from both; and this
they call understanding the Bible.
It has happened that all the answers which I have seen to the for-
mer part of “The Age of Reason” have been written by priests; and
these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and
pretend to understand the Bible; each understands it differently, but
each understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in tell-
ing their readers that Thomas Paine understands it not.
Now, instead of wasting their time, and heating themselves in
fractious disputations about doctrinal points drawn from the Bible,
these men ought to know, and if they do not, it is civility to inform
them, that the first thing to be understood is, whether there is suffi-
cient authority for believing the Bible to be the Word of God, or
whether there is not.
There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express
command of God, that are as shocking to humanity and to every idea
Thomas Paine 62
we have of moral justice as anything done by Robespierre, by Car-

rier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the
East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read
in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites)
came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as history itself
shows, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to
the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly
destroyed men, women, and children; that they left not a soul to
breathe – expressions that are repeated over and over again in those
books, and that, too, with exulting ferocity – are we sure these things
are facts? Are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned these
things to be done? And are we sure that the books that tell us so were
written by His authority?
It is not the antiquity of a tale that is any evidence of its truth; on
the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for the more an-
cient any history pretends to be, the more it has the resemblance of a
fable. The origin of every nation is buried in fabulous tradition, and
that of the Jews is as much to be suspected as any other.
To charge the commission of acts upon the Almighty, which, in
their own nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are crimes, as all
assassination is, and more especially the assassination of infants, is
matter of serious concern. The Bible tells us, that those assassina-
tions were done by the express command of God.
To believe, therefore, the Bible to be true, we must unbelieve all
our belief in the moral justice of God; for wherein could crying or
smiling infants offend? And to read the Bible without horror, we
must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing, and benevolent in
the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that
the Bible is fabulous than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be
true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.
But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible, I will
in the progress of this work produce such other evidence as even a
priest cannot deny, and show, from that evidence, that the Bible is not
entitled to credit as being the Word of God.
But, before I proceed to this examination, I will show wherein
the Bible differs from all other ancient writings with respect to the
nature of the evidence necessary to establish its authenticity; and this
is the more proper to be done, because the advocates of the Bible, in

their answers to the former part of “The Age of Reason,” undertake
to say, and they put some stress thereon, that the authenticity of the
Bible is as well established as that of any other ancient book; as if our
belief of the one could become any rule for our belief of the other.
I know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively
challenges universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid’s “Ele-
ments of Geometry”* and the reason is, because it is a book of
self-evident demonstration, entirely independent of its author, and of
everything relating to time, place, and circumstance. The matters
contained in that book would have the same authority they now have,
had they been written by any other person, or had the work been
anonymous, or had the author never been known; for the identical
certainty of who was the author, makes no part of our belief of the
matters contained in the book.
But it is quite otherwise with respect to the books ascribed to
Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel, etc.; those are books of testimony, and
they testify of things naturally incredible; and, therefore, the whole
of our belief as to the authenticity of those books rests, in the first
place, upon the certainty that they were written by Moses, Joshua,
and Samuel; secondly upon the credit we give to their testimony.
We may believe the first, that is, we may believe the certainty of
the authorship, and yet not the testimony; in the same manner that we
may believe that a certain person gave evidence upon a case and yet
not believe the evidence that he gave.
But if it should be found that the books ascribed to Moses,
Joshua, and Samuel, were not written by Moses, Joshua, and Sam-
uel, every part of the authority and authenticity of those books is
gone at once; for there can be no such thing as forged or invented tes-
timony; neither can there be anonymous testimony, more especially
as to things naturally incredible, such as that of talking with God face
to face, or that of the sun and moon standing still at the command of a
man.
* Euclid, according to Chronological history, lived three years before

Christ, and about one hundred years before Archimedes; he was of the
city of Alexandria in Egypt. – Author.
Thomas Paine 64
The greatest part of the other ancient books are works of genius,
of which kind are those ascribed to Homer, to Plato, to Aristotle, to
Demosthenes, to Cicero, etc. Here, again, the author is not essential
in the credit we give to any of those works, for, as works of genius,
they would have the same merit they have now, were they anony-
mous.
Nobody believes the Trojan story, as related by Homer, to be
true – for it is the poet only that is admired, and the merit of the poet
will remain, though the story be fabulous. But if we disbelieve the
matters related by the Bible authors, (Moses for instance), as we dis-
believe the things related by Homer, there remains nothing of Moses
in our estimation, but an impostor.
As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we
credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no
further; for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus
relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man and a
blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Je-
sus Christ by his historians. We must also believe the miracle cited
by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to let Alexander
and his army pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus.
These miracles are quite as well authenticated as the Bible mira-
cles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently the degree of evi-
dence necessary to establish our belief of things naturally incredible,
whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far greater than that which ob-
tains our belief to natural and probable things; and therefore the ad-
vocates for the Bible have no claim to our belief of the Bible, because
that we believe things stated in other ancient writings; since we be-
lieve the things stated in these writings no further than they are prob-
able and credible, or because they are self-evident, like Euclid; or
admire them because they are elegant, like Homer; or approve of
them because they are sedate, like Plato or judicious, like Aristotle.
Having premised these things, I proceed to examine the authen-
ticity of the Bible, and I begin with what are called the five books of
Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
My intention is to show that those books are spurious, and that Mo-
ses is not the author of them; and still further, that they were not writ-
ten in the time of Moses, nor till several hundred years afterward;
that they are no other than an attempted history of the life of Moses,
and of the times in which he is said to have lived, and also of the
times prior thereto, written by some very ignorant and stupid pre-
tenders to authorship, several hundred years after the death of Mo-
ses, as men now write histories of things that happened, or are
supposed to have happened, several hundred or several thousand
years ago.
The evidence that I shall produce in this case is from the books
themselves, and I shall confine myself to this evidence only. Were I
to refer for proof to any of the, ancient authors whom the advocates
of the Bible call profane authors, they would controvert that author-
ity, as I controvert theirs; I will therefore meet them on their own
ground, and oppose them with their own weapon, the Bible.
In the first place, there is no affirmative evidence that Moses is
the author of those books; and that he is the author, is an altogether
unfounded opinion, got abroad nobody knows how. The style and
manner in which those books were written give no room to believe,
or even to suppose, they were written by Moses, for it is altogether
the style and manner of another person speaking of Moses.
In Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers (for everything in Genesis is
prior to the time of Moses, and not the least allusion is made to him
therein), the whole, I say, of these books is in the third person; it is al-
ways, the Lord said unto Moses, or Moses said unto the Lord, or Mo-
ses said unto the people, or the people said unto Moses; and this is
the style and manner that historians use in speaking of the persons
whose lives and actions they are writing. It may be said that a man
may speak of himself in the third person, and therefore it may be sup-
posed that Moses did; but supposition proves nothing; and if the ad-
vocates for the belief that Moses wrote these books himself have
nothing better to advance than supposition, they may as well be si-
lent.
But granting the grammatical right that Moses might speak of
himself in the third person, because any man might speak of himself
in that manner, it cannot be admitted as a fact in those books that it is
Moses who speaks, without rendering Moses truly ridiculous and ab-
surd. For example, Numbers, chap. xii. ver. 3. Now the man Moses
Thomas Paine 66
was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the
earth.
If Moses said this of himself, instead of being the meekest of
men, he was one of the most vain and arrogant of coxcombs; and the
advocates for those books may now take which side they please, for
both sides are against them; if Moses was not the author, the books
are without authority; and if he was the author, the author is without
credit, because to boast of meekness is the reverse of meekness, and
is a lie in sentiment.
In Deuteronomy, the style and manner of writing marks more
evidently than in the former books that Moses is not the writer. The
manner here used is dramatical; the writer opens the subject by a
short introductory discourse, and then introduces Moses in the act of
speaking, and when he has made Moses finish his harangue, he (the
writer) resumes his own part, and speaks till he brings Moses for-
ward again, and at last closes the scene with an account of the death,
funeral, and character of Moses.
This interchange of speakers occurs four times in this book;
from the first verse of the first chapter to the end of the fifth verse, it
is the writer who speaks; he then introduces Moses as in the act of
making his harangue, and this continues to the end of the 40th verse
of the fourth chapter; here the writer drops Moses, and speaks histor-
ically of what was done in consequence of what Moses, when living,
is supposed to have said, and which the writer has dramatically
rehearsed.
The writer opens the subject again in the first verse of the fifth
chapter, though it is only by saying, that Moses called the people of
Israel together; he then introduces Moses as before, and continues
him, as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 26th chapter. He does
the same thing, at the beginning of the 27th chapter; and continues
Moses, as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 28th chapter. At the
29th chapter the writer speaks again through the whole of the first
verse and the first line of the second verse, where he introduces Mo-
ses for the last time, and continues him, as in the act of speaking, to
the end of the 33rd chapter.
The writer having now finished the rehearsal on the part of Mo-
ses, comes forward, and speaks through the whole of the last chapter;
he begins by telling the reader that Moses went to the top of Pisgah;
that he saw from thence the land which (the writer says) had been
promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that he, Moses, died there,
in the land of Moab, but that no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto
this day; that is, unto the time in which the writer lived who wrote the
book of Deuteronomy. The writer then tells us, that Moses was 120
years of age when he died – that his eye was not dim, nor his natural
force abated; and he concludes by saying that there arose not a
prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom, says this anonymous
writer, the Lord knew face to face.
Having thus shown, as far as grammatical evidence applies, that
Moses was not the writer of those books, I will, after making a few
observations on the inconsistencies of the writer of the book of Deu-
teronomy, proceed to show from the historical and chronological ev-
idence contained in those books, that Moses was not, because he
could not be, the writer of them, and consequently that there is no au-
thority for believing that the inhuman and horrid butcheries of men,
women, and children, told of in those books, were done, as those
books say they were, at the command of God. It is a duty incumbent
on every true Deist, that he vindicate the moral justice of God against
the calumnies of the Bible.
The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, whoever he was, (for it
is not an anonymous work), is obscure, and also in contradiction
with himself, in the account he has given of Moses.
After telling that Moses went to the top of Pisgah (and it does
not appear from any account that he ever came down again), he tells
us that Moses died there in the land of Moab, and that he buried him
in a valley in the land of Moab; but as there is no antecedent to the
pronoun he, there is no knowing who he was that did bury him. If the
writer meant that He (God) buried him, how should he (the writer)
know it? or why should we (the readers) believe him? since we know
not who the writer was that tells us so, for certainly Moses could not
himself tell where he was buried.
The writer also tells us, that no man knows where the sepulcher
of Moses is unto this day, meaning the time in which this writer
lived; how then should he know that Moses was buried in a valley in
the land of Moab? for as the writer lived long after the time of Moses,
Thomas Paine 68
as is evident from his using the expression of unto this day, meaning
a great length of time after the death of Moses, he certainly was not at
his funeral; and on the other hand, it is impossible that Moses himself
could say that no man knoweth where the sepulchre is unto this day.
To make Moses the speaker, would be an improvement on the play of
a child that hides himself and cries nobody can find me; nobody can
find Moses!
This writer has nowhere told us how he came by the speeches
which he has put into the mouth of Moses to speak, and therefore we
have a right to conclude, that he either composed them himself, or
wrote them from oral tradition. One or the other of these is the more
probable, since he has given in the fifth chapter a table of command-
ments, in which that called the fourth commandment is different
from the fourth commandment in the twentieth chapter of Exodus.
In that of Exodus, the reason given for keeping the seventh day
is, “because (says the commandment) God made the heavens and the
earth in six days and rested on the seventh;” but in that of Deuteron-
omy, the reason given is that it was the day on which the children of
Israel came out of Egypt, and therefore, says this commandment, the
Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day. This makes
no mention of the creation, nor that of the coming out of Egypt.
There are also many things given as laws of Moses in this book
that are not to be found in any of the other books; among which is
that inhuman and brutal law, chapter xxi., verses 18, 19, 20 and 21,
which authorizes parents, the father and the mother, to bring their
own children to have them stoned to death for what it is pleased to
call stubbornness.
But priests have always been fond of preaching up Deuteron-
omy, for Deuteronomy preaches up tithes; and it is from this book,
chap. xxv., ver. 4, that they have taken the phrase, and applied it to
tithing, that “thou shall not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the
corn”; and that this might not escape observation, they have noted it
in the table of contents at the head of the chapter, though it is only a
single verse of less than two lines. Oh, priests! priests! ye are willing
to be compared to an ox, for the sake of tithes.
Though it is impossible for us to know identically who the

writer of Deuteronomy was, it is not difficult to discover him profes-
sionally, that he was some Jewish priest, who lived, as I shall show in
the course of this work, at least three hundred and fifty years after the
time of Moses.
I come now to speak of the historical and chronological evi-
dence. The chronology that I shall use is the Bible chronology, for I
mean not to go out of the Bible for evidence of anything, but to make
the Bible itself prove, historically and chronologically, that Moses is
not the author of the books ascribed to him. It is, therefore, proper
that I inform the reader (such a one at least as may not have the op-
portunity of knowing it), that in the larger Bibles, and also in some
smaller ones, there is a series of chronology printed in the margin of
every page, for the purpose of showing how long the historical mat-
ters stated in each page happened, or are supposed to have happened,
before Christ, and, consequently, the distance of time between one
historical circumstance and another.
I begin with the book of Genesis. In the 14th chapter of Genesis,
the writer gives an account of Lot being taken prisoner in a battle be-
tween the four kings against five, and carried off; and that when the
account of Lot being taken, came to Abraham, he armed all his
household and marched to rescue Lot from the captors, and that he
pursued them unto Dan (ver. 14).
To show in what manner this expression pursuing them unto
Dan applies to the case in question, I will refer to two circumstances,
the one in America, the other in France.
The city now called New York, in America, was originally New
Amsterdam; and the town in France, lately called Havre Marat, was
before called Havre de Grace. New Amsterdam was changed to New
York in the year 1664; Havre de Grace to Havre Marat in 1793.
Should, therefore, any writing be found, though without date, in
which the name of New York should be mentioned, it would be cer-
tain evidence that such a uniting could not have been written before,
but must have been written after New Amsterdam was changed to
New York, and consequently, not till after the year 1664, or at least
during the course of that year. And, in like manner, any dateless writ-
ing with the name of Havre Marat would be certain evidence that
Thomas Paine 70
such a writing must have been written after Havre de Grace became
Havre Marat, and consequently not till after the year 1793, or at least
during the course of that year.
I now come to the application of those cases, and to show that
there was no such place as Dan, till many years after the death of Mo-
ses, and consequently, that Moses could not be the writer of the book
of Genesis, where this account of pursuing them unto Dan is given.
The place that is called Dan in the Bible was originally a town of the
Gentiles called Laish; and when the tribe of Dan seized upon this
town, they changed its name to Dan, in commemoration of Dan, who
was the father of that tribe, and the great-grandson of Abraham.
To establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer from Genesis,
to the 18th chapter of the book called the Book of Judges. It is there
said (ver. 27) that they (the Danites) came unto Laish to a people that
were quiet and secure, and they smote them with the edge of the
sword (the Bible is filled with murder), and burned the city with fire;
and they built a city (ver. 28), and dwelt therein, and they called the
name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan, their father, howbeit the
name of the city was Laish at the first.
This account of the Danites taking possession of Laish and
changing it to Dan, is placed in the Book of Judges immediately after
the death of Sampson. The death of Sampson is said to have hap-
pened 1120 years before Christ, and that of Moses 1451 before
Christ; and, therefore, according to the historical arrangement, the
place was not called Dan till 331 years after the death of Moses.
There is a striking confusion between the historical and the
chronological arrangement in the book of Judges. The five last chap-
ters, as they stand in the book, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, are put chronologi-
cally before all the preceding chapters; they are made to be 28 years
before the 16th chapter, 266 before the 15th, 245 before the 13th, 195
before the 9th, 90 before the 4th, and 15 years before the 1st chapter.
This shows the uncertain and fabulous state of the Bible.
According to the chronological arrangement, the taking of Laish
and giving it the name of Dan is made to be 20 years after the death of
Joshua, who was the successor of Moses; and by the historical order
as it stands in the book, it is made to be 306 years after the death of
Joshua, and 331 after that of Moses; but they both exclude Moses
from being the writer of Genesis, because, according to either of the

statements, no such place as Dan existed in the time of Moses; and
therefore the writer of Genesis must have been some person who
lived after the town of Laish had the name of Dan; and who that per-
son was nobody knows, and consequently the book of Genesis is
anonymous and without authority.
I proceed now to state another point of historical and chronolog-
ical evidence, and to show therefrom, as in the preceding case, that
Moses is not the author of the book of Genesis.
In the 36th chapter of Genesis there is given a genealogy of the
sons and descendants of Esau, who are called Edomites, and also a
list, by name, of the kings of Edom, in enumerating of which, it is
said, (verse 31), And these are the kings that reigned in Edom, before
there reigned any king over the children of Israel.
Now, were any dateless writings to be found in which, speaking
of any past events, the writer should say, These things happened be-
fore there was any Congress in America, or before there was any
Convention in France, it would be evidence that such writing could
not have been written before, and could only be written after there
was a Congress in America, or a Convention in France, as the case
might be; and, consequently, that it could not be written by any per-
son who died before there was a Congress in the one country or a
Convention in the other.
Nothing is more frequent, as well in history as in conversation,
than to refer to a fact in the room of a date; it is most natural so to do,
first, because a fact fixes itself in the memory better than a date; sec-
ondly, because the fact includes the date, and serves to excite two
ideas at once; and this manner of speaking by circumstances implies
as positively that the fact alluded to is past as if it were so expressed.
When a person speaking upon any matter, says, it was before I
was married, or before my son was born, or before I went to Amer-
ica, or before I went to France, it is absolutely understood, and in-
tended to be understood, that he had been married, that he has had a
son, that he has been in America, or been in France. Language does
not admit of using this mode of expression in any other sense; and
whenever such an expression is found anywhere, it can only be un-
derstood in the sense in which it only could have been used.
Thomas Paine 72
The passage, therefore, that I have quoted – “that these are the
kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the
children of Israel” – could only have been written after the first king
began to reign over them; and, consequently, that the book of Gene-
sis, so far from having been written by Moses, could not have been
written till the time of Saul at least.
This is the positive sense of the passage; but the expression, any
king, implies more kings than one, at least it implies two, and this
will carry it to the time of David; and if taken in a general sense, it
carries it through all the time of the Jewish monarchy.
Had we met with this verse in any part of the Bible that pro-
fessed to have been written after kings began to reign in Israel, it
would have been impossible not to have seen the application of it. It
happens then that this is the case; the two books of Chronicles, which
give a history of all the kings, of Israel, are professedly, as well as in
fact, written after the Jewish monarchy began; and this verse that I
have quoted, and all the remaining verses of the 36th chapter of Gen-
esis, are word for word in the first chapter of Chronicles, beginning
at the 43rd verse.
It was with consistency that the writer of the Chronicles could
say, as he has said, 1st Chron., chap. i., ver. 43, These are the kings
that reigned in the land of Edom, before any king reigned over the
children of Israel, because he was going to give, and has given, a list
of the kings that had reigned in Israel; but as it is impossible that the
same expression could have been used before that period, it is as cer-
tain as anything that can be proved from historical language that this
part of Genesis is taken from Chronicles, and that Genesis is not so
old as Chronicles, and probably not so old as the book of Homer, or
as Aesop’s “Fables,” admitting Homer to have been, as the tables of
chronology state, contemporary with David or Solomon, and Aesop
to have lived about the end of the Jewish monarchy.
Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author,
on which only the strange belief that it is the Word of God has stood,
and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of sto-
ries, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright
lies. The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops
to a level with the Arabian tales, without the merit of being entertain-
ing; and the account of men living to eight and nine hundred years
becomes as fabulous immortality of the giants of the Mythology.
Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the
most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was
the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the
pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, com-
mitted the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the his-
tory of any nation, of which I will state only one instance.
When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering
and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows: Numbers,
chap. xxxi., ver. 13:
“And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the
congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses
was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thou-
sands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and
Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? behold,
these caused the children of Israel, through the council of Balaam, to
commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was
a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now, therefore, kill ev-
ery male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known
a man by lying with him; but all the women-children, that have not
known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”
Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world
have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater
than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the
boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.
Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers; one
child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the
hands of an executioner; let any daughter put herself in the situation
of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother
and a brother, and what will be their feelings? It is in vain that we at-
tempt to impose upon nature, for nature will have her course, and the
religion that tortures all her social ties is a false religion.
After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder
taken, and the manner of dividing it; and here it is that the profane-
ness of priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes. Ver. 37,
Thomas Paine 74
“And the Lord’s tribute of sheep was six hundred and three score and
fifteen; and the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the
Lord’s tribute was three score and twelve; and the asses were thirty
thousand and five hundred, of which the Lord’s tribute was three
score and one; and the persons were sixteen thousand, of which the
Lord’s tribute was thirty and two persons.”
In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many
other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read or for de-
cency to hear, for it appears, from the 35th verse of this chapter, that
the number of women-children consigned to debauchery by the or-
der of Moses was thirty-two thousand.
People in general do not know what wickedness there is in this
pretended Word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they
take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they per-
mit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form
of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been
taught to believe was written by His authority. Good heavens! it is
quite another thing; it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy;
for what can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe the wickedness of
man to the orders of the Almighty?
But to return to my subject, that of showing that Moses is not the
author of the books ascribed to him, and that the Bible is spurious.
The two instances I have already given would be sufficient without
any additional evidence, to invalidate the authenticity of any book
that pretended to be four or five hundred years more ancient than the
matters it speaks of, or refers to, as facts; for in the case of pursuing
them unto Dan, and of the kings that reigned over the children of Is-
rael, not even the flimsy pretense of prophecy can be pleaded. The
expressions are in the preterite tense, and it would be downright
idiotism to say that a man could prophesy in the preterite tense.
But there are many other passages scattered throughout those
books that unite in the same point of evidence. It is said in Exodus,
(another of the books ascribed to Moses), chap. xvi. verse 34, “And
the children of Israel did eat manna forty years until they came to a
land inhabited; they did eat manna until they came unto the borders
of the land of Canaan.”
Whether the children of Israel ate manna or not, or what manna

was, or whether it was anything more than a kind of fungus or small
mushroom, or other vegetable substance common to that part of the
country, makes no part of my argument; all that I mean to show is,
that it is not Moses that could write this account, because the account
extends itself beyond the life and time of Moses. Moses, according
to the Bible, (but it is such a book of lies and contradictions there is
no knowing which part to believe, or whether any), died in the wil-
derness and never came upon the borders of the land of Cannan; and
consequently it could not be he that said what the children of Israel
did, or what they ate when they came there.
This account of eating manna, which they tell us was written by
Moses, extends itself to the time of Joshua, the successor of Moses;
as appears by the account given in the book of Joshua, after the chil-
dren of Israel had passed the river Jordan, and came unto the borders
of the land of Canaan. Joshua, chap. v., verse 12. “And the manna
ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of the old corn of the
land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more, but they did
eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.”
But a more remarkable instance than this occurs in Deuteron-
omy, which, while it shows that Moses could not be the writer of that
book, shows also the fabulous notions that prevailed at that time
about giants. In the third chapter of Deuteronomy, among the con-
quests said to be made by Moses, is an account of the taking of Og,
king of Bashan, v. 11. “For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the
remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it
not in Rabbath of the children of Ammom? Nine cubits was the
length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a
man.”
A cubit is 1 foot 9 888-1000ths inches; the length, therefore, of
the bed was 16 feet 4 inches, and the breadth 7 feet 4 inches; thus
much for this giant’s bed. Now for the historical part, which, though
the evidence is not so direct and positive as in the former cases, it is
nevertheless very presumable and corroborating evidence, and is
better than the best evidence on the contrary side.
The writer, by way of proving the existence of this giant, refers
to his bed as an ancient relic, and says, Is it not in Rabbath (or
Thomas Paine 76
Rabbah) of the children of Ammon? meaning that it is; for such is

frequently the Bible method of affirming a thing. But it could not be
Moses that said this, because Moses could know nothing about
Rabbah, nor of what was in it.
Rabbah was not a city belonging to this giant king, nor was it
one of the cities that Moses took. The knowledge, therefore, that this
bed was at Rabbah, and of the particulars of its dimensions, must be
referred to the time when Rabbah was taken, and this was not till four
hundred years after the death of Moses; for which see 2 Sam. chap.
xii., ver. 26. “And Joab (David’s general) fought against Rabbah of
the children of Ammon, and took the royal city.”
As I am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in
time, place, and circumstance that abound in the books ascribed to
Moses, and which prove to demonstration that those books could not
have been written by Moses, nor in the time of Moses, I proceed to
the book of Joshua, and to show that Joshua is not the author of that
book, and that it is anonymous and without authority. The evidence I
shall produce is contained in the book itself; I will not go out of the
Bible for proof against the supposed authenticity of the Bible. False
testimony is always good against itself.
Joshua, according to the first chapter of Joshua, was the imme-
diate successor of Moses; he was, moreover, a military man, which
Moses was not, and he continued as chief of the people of Israel 25
years, that is, from the time that Moses died, which, according to the
Bible chronology, was 1451 years before Christ, until 1426 years be-
fore Christ, when, according to the same chronology, Joshua died.
If, therefore, we find in this book, said to have been written by
Joshua, reference to facts done after the death of Joshua, it is evi-
dence that Joshua could not be the author; and also that the book
could not have been written till after the time of the latest fact which
it records. As to the character of the book, it is horrid; it is a military
history of rapine and murder, as savage and brutal as those recorded
of his predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, Moses; and the blas-
phemy consists, as in the former books, in ascribing those deeds to
the orders of the Almighty.
In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the case in the preced-
ing books, is written in the third person; it is the historian of Joshua
that speaks, for it would have been absurd and vain-glorious that
Joshua should say of himself, as is said of him in the last verse of the
sixth chapter, that “his fame was noised throughout all the country.”
I now come more immediately to the proof.
In the 24th chapter, ver. 31, it is said, “And Israel served the
Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that
overlived Joshua.” Now, in the name of common sense, can it be
Joshua that relates what people had done after he was dead? This ac-
count must not only have been written by some historian that lived
after Joshua, but that lived also after the elders that outlived Joshua.
There are several passages of a general meaning with respect to
time scattered throughout the book of Joshua, that carries the time in
which the book was written to a distance from the time of Joshua, but
without marking by exclusion any particular time, as in the passage
above quoted. In that passage, the time that intervened between the
death of Joshua and the death of the elders is excluded descriptively
and absolutely, and the evidence substantiates that the book could
not have been written till after the death of the last.
But though the passages to which I allude, and which I am going
to quote, do not designate any particular time by exclusion, they im-
ply a time far more distant from the days of Joshua than is contained
between the death of Joshua and the death of the elders. Such is the
passage, chap. x., ver. 14, where, after giving an account that thesun
stood still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, at the
command of Joshua (a tale only fit to amuse children), the passage
says, “And there was no day like that, before it, or after it, that the
Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man.”
This tale of the sun standing still upon mount Gibeon, and the
moon in the valley of Ajalon, is one of those fables that detects itself.
Such a circumstance could not have happened without being known
all over the world. One half would have wondered why the sun did
not rise, and the other why it did not set; and the tradition of it would
be universal, whereas there is not a nation in the world that knows
anything about it.
But why must the moon stand still? What occasion could there
be for moonlight in the daytime, and that too while the sun shone? As
Thomas Paine 78
a poetical figure, the whole is well enough; it is akin to that in the

song of Deborah and Barak, The stars in their courses fought against
Sisera; but it is inferior to the figurative declaration of Mahomet to
the persons who came to expostulate with him on his goings on:
“Wert thou,” said he, “to come to me with the sun in thy right hand
and the moon in thy left, it should not alter my career.”
For Joshua to have exceeded Mahomet, he should have put the
sun and moon one in each pocket, and carried them as Guy Fawkes
carried his dark lantern, and taken them out to shine as he might hap-
pen to want them.
The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it
is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime
makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the
sublime again; the account, however, abstracted from the poetical
fancy, shows the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have com-
manded the earth to have stood still.
The time implied by the expression after it, that is, after that day,
being put in comparison with all the time that passed before it, must,
in order to give any expressive signification to the passage, mean a
great length of time; for example, it would have been ridiculous to
have said so the next day, or the next week, or the next month, or the
next year; to give, therefore, meaning to the passage, comparative
with the wonder it relates and the prior time it alludes to, it must
mean centuries of years; less, however, than one would be trifling,
and less than two would be barely admissible.
A distant but general time is also expressed in the 8th chapter,
where, after giving an account of the taking of the city of Ai, it is
said, ver. 28, “And Joshua burned Ai, and made it a heap forever,
even a desolation unto this day”; and again, ver. 29, where, speaking
of the king of Ai, whom Joshua had hanged, and buried at the enter-
ing of the gate, it is said, “And he raised thereon a great heap of
stones, which remaineth unto this day,” that is, unto the day or time
in which the writer of the book of Joshua lived. And again, in the
10th chapter, where, after speaking of the five kings whom Joshua
had hanged on five trees, and then thrown in a cave, it is said, “And
he laid great stones on the cave’s mouth, which remain unto this very
day.”
In enumerating the several exploits of Joshua, and of the tribes,

and of the places which they conquered or attempted, it is said, chap.
xv., ver. 63: “As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the
children of Judah could not drive them out; but the Jebusites dwell
with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day.” The question
upon this passage is, at what time did the Jebusites and the children
of Judah dwell together at Jerusalem? As this matter occurs again in
the first chapter of Judges, I shall reserve my observations until I
come to that part.
Having thus shown from the book of Joshua itself without any
auxiliary evidence whatever, that Joshua is not the author of that
book, and that it is anonymous, and consequently without authority, I
proceed as before mentioned, to the book of Judges.
The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it; and, there-
fore, even the pretence is wanting to call it the Word of God; it has
not so much as a nominal voucher; it is altogether fatherless.
This book begins with the same expression as the book of
Joshua. That of Joshua begins, chap. i., verse 1, “Now after the death
of Moses,” etc., and this of the Judges begins, “Now after the death
of Joshua,” etc. This, and the similarity of style between the two
books, indicate that they are the work of the same author, but who he
was is altogether unknown; the only point that the book proves, is
that the author lived long after the time of Joshua; for though it be-
gins as if it followed immediately after his death, the second chapter
is an epitome or abstract of the whole book, which, according to the
Bible chronology, extends its history through a space of 306 years;
that is, from the death of Joshua, 1426 years before Christ, to the
death of Samson, 1120 years before Christ, and only 25 years before
Saul went to seek his father’s asses, and was made king. But there is
good reason to believe, that it was not written till the time of David,
at least, and that the book of Joshua was not written before the same
time.
In the first chapter of Judges, the writer, after announcing the
death of Joshua, proceeds to tell what happened between the children
of Judah and the native inhabitants of the land of Canaan. In this
statement, the writer, having abruptly mentioned Jerusalem in the
7th verse, says immediately after, in the 8th verse, by way of expla-
Thomas Paine 80
nation, “Now the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem,

and had taken it”; consequently this book could not have been writ-
ten before Jerusalem had been taken. The reader will recollect the
quotation I have just before made from the 15th chapter of Joshua,
ver. 63, where it is said that the Jebusites dwell with the children of
Judah at Jerusalem at this day, meaning the time when the book of
Joshua was written.
The evidence I have already produced to prove that the books I
have hitherto treated of were not written by the persons to whom
they are ascribed, nor till many years after their death, if such per-
sons ever lived, is already so abundant that I can afford to admit this
passage with less weight than I am entitled to draw from it. For the
case is, that so far as the Bible can be credited as a history, the city of
Jerusalem was not taken till the time of David; and consequently that
the books of Joshua and of Judges were not written till after the com-
mencement of the reign of David, which was 370 years after the
death of Joshua.
The name of the city that was afterward called Jerusalem was
originally Jebus, or Jebusi, and was the capital of the Jebusites. The
account of David’s taking this city is given in II. Samuel, chap. v.,
ver. 4, etc.; also in I. Chron. chap. xiv., ver. 4, etc. There is no men-
tion in any part of the Bible that it was ever taken before, nor any ac-
count that favors such an opinion.
It is not said, either in Samuel or in Chronicles, that they utterly
destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to
breathe, as is said of their other conquests; and the silence here ob-
served implies that it was taken by capitulation, and that the
Jebusites, the native inhabitants, continued to live in the place after it
was taken. The account therefore, given in Joshua, that the Jebusites
dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem at this day corresponds
to no other time than after the taking of the city by David.
Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis
to Judges, is without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an idle,
bungling story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a
strolling country-girl creeping slyly to bed with her cousin Boaz.
Pretty stuff indeed, to be called the Word of God! It is, however, one
of the best books in the Bible, for it is free from murder and rapine.
I come next to the two books of Samuel, and to show that those
books were not written by Samuel, nor till a great length of time after
the death of Samuel; and that they are, like all the former books,
anonymous and without authority.
To be convinced that these books have been written much later
than the time of Samuel, and consequently not by him, it is only nec-
essary to read the account which the writer gives of Saul going to
seek his father’s asses, and of his interview with Samuel, of whom
Saul went to inquire about those lost asses, as foolish people nowa-
days go to a conjuror to inquire after lost things.
The writer, in relating this story of Saul, Samuel and the asses,
does not tell it as a thing that has just then happened, but as an ancient
story in the time this writer lived; for he tells it in the language or
terms used at the time that Samuel lived, which obliges the writer to
explain the story in the terms or language used in the time the writer
lived.
Samuel, in the account given of him, in the first of those books,
chap ix., is called the seer; and it is by this term that Saul inquires af-
ter him, ver. II, “And as they (Saul and his servant) went up the hill to
the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water; and they
said unto them, Is the seer here?” Saul then went according to the di-
rection of these maidens, and met Samuel without knowing him, and
said unto him, ver. 18, “Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer’s house
is? and Samuel answered Saul, and said, I am the seer.”
As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions and
answers, in the language or manner of speaking used in the time they
are said to have been spoken, and as that manner of speaking was out
of use when this author wrote, he found it necessary, in order to make
the story understood, to explain the terms in which these questions
and answers are spoken; and he does this in the 9th verse, when he
says “Before-time, in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, thus
he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer; for he that is now called a
Prophet, was before-time called a seer.”
This proves, as I have before said, that this story of Saul, Samuel
and the asses, was an ancient story at the time the book of Samuel
was written, and consequently that Samuel did not write it, and that
that book is without authenticity.
Thomas Paine 82
But if we go further into those books the evidence is still more

positive that Samuel is not the writer of them; for they relate things
that did not happen till several years after the death of Samuel. Sam-
uel died before Saul; for the 1st Samuel, chap. xxviii., tells that Saul
and the witch of Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead; yet the
history of the matters contained in those books is extended through
the remaining part of Saul’s life, and to the latter end of the life of
David, who succeeded Saul.
The account of the death and burial of Samuel (a thing which he
could not write himself) is related in the 25th chapter of the first book
of Samuel, and the chronology affixed to this chapter makes this to
be 1060 years before Christ; yet the history of this first book is
brought down to 1056 years before Christ; that is, till the death of
Saul, which was not till four years after the death of Samuel.
The second book of Samuel begins with an account of things
that did not happen till four years after Samuel was dead; for it be-
gins with the reign of David, who succeeded Saul, and it goes on to
the end of David’s reign, which was forty-three years after the death
of Samuel; and, therefore, the books are in themselves positive evi-
dence that they were not written by Samuel.
I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the Bi-
ble to which the names of persons are affixed, as being the authors of
those books, and which the Church, styling itself the Christian
Church, have imposed upon the world as the writings of Moses,
Joshua and Samuel, and I have detected and proved the falsehood of
this imposition.
And now, ye priests of every description, who have preached
and written against the former part of “The Age of Reason,” what
have ye to say? Will ye, with all this mass of evidence against you,
and staring you in the face, still have the assurance to march into
your pulpits and continue to impose these books on your congrega-
tions as the works of inspired penmen, and the Word of God, when it
is as evident as demonstration can make truth appear, that the per-
sons who ye say are the authors, are not the authors, and that ye know
not who the authors are?
What shadow of pretense have ye now to produce for continuing
the blasphemous fraud? What have ye still to offer against the pure
and moral religion of Deism, in support of your system of falsehood,

idolatry, and pretended revelation? Had the cruel and murderous or-
ders with which the Bible is filled, and the numberless torturing exe-
cutions of men, women and children, inconsequence of those orders,
been ascribed to some friend whose memory you revered, you would
have glowed with satisfaction at detecting the falsehood of the
charge, and gloried in defending his injured fame.
Is it because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no
interest in the honor of your Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales
of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference? The evidence I
have produced, and shall produce in the course of this work, to prove
that the Bible is without authority, will, while it wounds the stub-
bornness of a priest, relieve and tranquilize the minds of millions; it
will free them from all those hard thoughts of the Almighty which
priestcraft and the Bible had infused into their minds, and which
stood in everlasting opposition to all their ideas of His moral justice
and benevolence.
I come now to the two books of Kings, and the two books of
Chronicles. Those books are altogether historical, and are chiefly
confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who in general
were a parcel of rascals; but these are matters with which we have no
more concern than we have with the Roman emperors or Homer’s
account of the Trojan War.
Besides which, as those works are anonymous, and as we know
nothing of the writer, or of his character, it is impossible for us to
know what degree of credit to give to the matters related therein.
Like all other ancient histories, they appear to be a jumble of fable
and of fact, and of probable and of improbable things; but which dis-
tance of time and place, and change of circumstances in the world,
have rendered obsolete and uninteresting.
The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of compar-
ing them with each other, and with other parts of the Bible, to show
the confusion, contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended Word of
God.
The first book of Kings begins with the reign of Solomon,
which, according to the Bible chronology, was 1015 years before
Christ; and the second book ends 588 years before Christ, being a lit-
tle after the reign of Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadnezzar, after taking
Jerusalem and conquering the Jews, carried captive to Babylon. The
two books include a space of 427 years.
Thomas Paine 84
The two books of Chronicles are a history of the same times, and
in general of the same persons, by another author; for it would be ab-
surd to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice over.
The first book of Chronicles (after giving the genealogy from Adam
to Saul, which takes up the first nine chapters), begins with the reign
of David; and the last book ends as in the last book of Kings, soon af-
ter the reign of Zedekiah, about 588 years before Christ. The two last
verses of the last chapter bring the history forward 52 years more,
that is, to 536. But these verses do not belong to the book, as I shall
show when I come to speak of the book of Ezra.
The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David and
Solomon, who reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of the lives
of 17 kings and one queen, who are styled kings of Judah, and of 19,
who are styled kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation, immediately on
the death of Solomon, split into two parties, who chose separate
kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each other.
These two books are little more than a history of assassinations,
treachery and wars. The cruelties that the Jews had accustomed
themselves to practice on the Canaanites, whose country they had
savagely invaded under a pretended gift from God, they afterward
practiced as furiously on each other. Scarcely half their kings died a
natural death, and in some instances whole families were destroyed
to secure possession to the successor; who, after a few years, and
sometimes only a few months or less, shared the same fate. In the
tenth chapter of the second book of Kings, an account is given of two
baskets full of children’s heads, seventy in number, being exposed at
the entrance of the city; they were the children of Ahab, and were
murdered by the order of Jehu, whom Elisha, the pretended man of
God, had anointed to be king over Israel, on purpose to commit this
bloody deed, and assassinate his predecessor.
And in the account of the reign of Menahem, one of the kings of
Israel who had murdered Shallum, who had reigned but one month, it
is said, II. Kings, chap. xv., ver. 16, that Menahem smote the city of
Tiphsah, because they opened not the city to him, and all the women
therein that were with child he ripped up.
Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would
distinguish any nation of people by the name of His chosen people,
we must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest
of the world of the purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation
of ruffians and cut-throats as the ancient Jews were; a people who,
corrupted by and copying after such monsters and impostors as Mo-
ses and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel and David, had distinguished them-
selves above all others on the face of the known earth for barbarity
and wickedness.
If we will not stubbornly shut our eyes and steel our hearts, it is
impossible not to see, in spite of all that long-established superstition
imposes upon the mind, that the flattering appellation of His chosen
people is no other than a lie which the priests and leaders of the Jews
had invented to cover the baseness of their own characters, and
which Christian priests, sometimes as corrupt and often as cruel,
have professed to believe.
The two books of Chronicles are a repetition of the same crimes,
but the history is broken in several places by the author leaving out
the reign of some of their kings; and in this, as well as in that of
Kings, there is such a frequent transition from kings of Judah to
kings of Israel, and from kings of Israel to kings of Judah, that the
narrative is obscure in the reading.
In the same book the history sometimes contradicts itself; for
example, in the second book of Kings, chap, i., ver. 17, we are told,
but in rather ambiguous terms, that after the death of Ahaziah, king
of Israel, Jehoram, or Joram (who was of the house of Ahab), reigned
in his stead, in the second year of Jehoram or Joram, son of
Jehoshaphat, king of Judah; and in chap. viii., ver. 16, of the same
book, it is said, and in the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of
Israel, Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah, began to reign; that is,
one chapter says Joram of Judah began to reign in the second year of
Joram of Israel; and the other chapter says, that Joram of Israel began
to reign in the fifth year of Joram of Judah.
Several of the most extraordinary matters related in one history,
as having happened during the reign of such and such of their kings,
are not to be found in the other, in relating the reign of the same king;
for example, the two first rival kings, after the death of Solomon,
were Rehoboam and Jeroboam; and in I. Kings, chaps. xii and xiii, an
account is given of Jeroboam making an offering of burnt incense,
Thomas Paine 86
and that a man, who was there called a man of God, cried out against
the altar, chap. xiii., ver. 2: “O altar, altar! thus saith the Lord; Be-
hold, a child shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name; and
upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn in-
cense upon thee, and men’s bones shall be burnt upon thee.” Verse 3:
“And it came to pass, when king Jeroboam heard the saying of the
man of God, which had cried against the altar in Bethel, that he put
forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay hold on him. And his hand
which he put out against him dried up, so that he could not pull it in
again to him."
One would think that such an extraordinary case as this (which
is spoken of as a judgment), happening to the chief of one of the par-
ties, and that at the first moment of the separation of the Israelites
into two nations, would, if it had been true, have been recorded in
both histories. But though men in latter times have believed all that
the prophets have said unto them, it does not appear that these proph-
ets or historians believed each other; they knew each other too well.
A long account also is given in Kings about Elijah. It runs
through several chapters, and concludes with telling, II. Kings, chap.
ii., ver. 11, “And it came to pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha) still went
on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and
horses of fire, and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went up by a
whirlwind into heaven.” Hum! this the author of Chronicles, miracu-
lous as the story is, makes no mention of, though he mentions Elijah
by name; neither does he say anything of the story related in the sec-
ond chapter of the same book of Kings, of a parcel of children calling
Elisha bald head, bald head; and that this man of God, verse 24,
“Turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of
the Lord; and there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and
tore forty-and-two children of them.”
He also passes over in silence the story told, II. Kings, chap.
xiii., that when they were burying a man in the sepulchre where
Elisha had been buried, it happened that the dead man, as they were
letting him down, (ver. 21), touched the bones of Elisha, and he (the
dead man) “revived, and stood upon his feet.”
The story does not tell us whether they buried the man, notwith-
standing he revived and stood upon his feet, or drew him up again.
Upon all these stories the writer of Chronicles is as silent as any

writer of the present day who did not choose to be accused of lying,
or at least of romancing, would be about stories of the same kind.
But, however these two historians may differ from each other
with respect to the tales related by either, they are silent alike with re-
spect to those men styled prophets, whose writings fill up the latter
part of the Bible.
Isaiah, who lived in the time of Hezekiah, is mentioned in
Kings, and again in Chronicles, when these historians are speaking
of that reign; but, except in one or two instances at most, and those
very slightly, none of the rest are so much as spoken of, or even their
existence hinted at; although, according to the Bible chronology,
they lived within the time those histories were written; some of them
long before.
If those prophets, as they are called, were men of such impor-
tance in their day as the compilers of the Bible and priests and com-
mentators have since represented them to be, how can it be
accounted for that not one of these histories should say anything
about them?
The history in the books of Kings and of Chronicles is brought
forward, as I have already said, to the year 588 before Christ; it will,
therefore, be proper to examine which of these prophets lived before
that period.
Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in which
they lived before Christ, according to the chronology affixed to the
first chapter of each of the books of the prophets; and also of the
number of years they lived before the books of Kings and Chronicles
were written.
TABLE OF THE PROPHETS
Years
Years before Kings
Names before Observations
and Chronicles
Christ
Isaiah 760 172 mentioned

Thomas Paine 88
mentioned only in
Jeremiah 629 41 the last chapter
of Chronicles
Ezekiel 595 7 not mentioned
Daniel 607 19 not mentioned
Hosea 785 97 not mentioned
Joel 800 212 not mentioned
Amos 789 199 not mentioned
Obadiah 789 199 not mentioned
Jonah 862 274 not mentioned*
Micah 750 162 not mentioned
Nahum 713 125 not mentioned
Habakkuk 620 38 not mentioned
Zephaniah 630 42 not mentioned
Haggai after
Zachariah the
Malachi year 588
This table is either not very honorable for the Bible historians,
or not very honorable for the Bible prophets; and I leave to priests
and commentators, who are very learned in little things, to settle the
point of etiquette between the two, and to assign a reason why the au-
thors of Kings and Chronicles have treated those prophets whom, in
the former part of “The Age of Reason,” I have considered as poets,
with as much degrading silence as any historian of the present day
would treat Peter Pindar.
* In II. Kings, chap. xiv., ver. 25, the name of Jonah is mentioned on ac-
count of the restoration of a tract of land by Jeroboam; but nothing fur-
ther is said of him, nor is any allusion made to the book of Jonah, nor to
his expedition to Nineveh, nor to his encounter with the whale.
– Author
I have one observation more to make on the book of Chronicles,

after which I shall pass on to review the remaining books of the
Bible.
In my observations on the book of Genesis, I have quoted a pas-
sage from the 36th chapter, verse 31, which evidently refers to a time
after kings began to reign over the children of Israel; and I have
shown that as this verse is verbatim the same as in Chronicles, chap.
i, verse 43, where it stands consistently with the order of history,
which in Genesis it does not, that the verse in Genesis, and a great
part of the 36th chapter, have been taken from Chronicles; and that
the book of Genesis, though it is placed first in the Bible, and as-
cribed to Moses, has been manufactured by some unknown person
after the book of Chronicles was written, which was not until at least
eight hundred and sixty years after the time of Moses.
The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this is regular and has
in it but two stages. First, as I have already stated that the passage in
Genesis refers itself for time to Chronicles; secondly, that the book of
Chronicles, to which this passage refers itself, was not begun to be
written until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of
Moses. To prove this, we have only to look into the thirteenth verse
of the third chapter of the first book of Chronicles, where the writer,
in giving the genealogy of the descendants of David, mentions
Zedekiah; and it was in the time of Zedekiah that Nebuchadnezzar
conquered Jerusalem, 588 years before Christ and consequently
more than 860 years after Moses.
Those who have superstitiously boasted of the antiquity of the
Bible, and particularly of the books ascribed to Moses, have done it
without examination, and without any other authority than that of
one credulous man telling it to another; for, so far as historical and
chronological evidence applies, the very first book in the Bible is not
so ancient as the book of Homer by more than three hundred years,
and is about the same age with Aesop’s “Fables.”
I am not contending for the morality of Homer; on the contrary, I
think it a book of false glory, tending to inspire immoral and mischie-
vous notions of honor; and with respect to Aesop, though the moral
is in general just, the fable is often cruel; and the cruelty of the fable
Thomas Paine 90
does more injury to the heart, especially in a child, than the moral
does good to the judgment.
Having now dismissed Kings and Chronicles, I come to the next
in course, the book of Ezra.
As one proof, among others I shall produce, to show the disorder
in which this pretended word of God, the Bible, has been put to-
gether, and the uncertainty of who the authors were, we have only to
look at the three first verses in Ezra, and the last two in Chronicles;
for by what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been that the three
first verses in Ezra should be the two last verses in Chronicles, or that
the two last in Chronicles should be the three first in Ezra? Either the
authors did not know their own works, or the compilers did not know
the authors.
Two last verses of Chronicles:
Ver. 22. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the
word of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be accom-
plished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he
made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in
writing, saying,
23. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the
earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me: and he hath charged me
to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there
among you of all his people? the Lord his God be with him, and let
him go up.
Three first verses of Ezra:
Ver. 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the
word of the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the
Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a
proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing,
saying,
2. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord God of heaven hath
given me all the kingdoms of earth; and he hath charged me to build
him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
3. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with
him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the
house of the Lord God of Israel (he is the God,) which is in Jerusa-
lem.
The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends in the

middle of the phrase with the word up, without signifying to what
place. This abrupt break, and the appearance of the same verses in
different books, show, as I have already said, the disorder and igno-
rance in which the Bible has been put together, and that the compil-
ers of it had no authority for what they were doing, nor we any
authority for believing what they have done.1
The only thing that has any appearance of certainty in the book
of Ezra, is the time in which it was written, which was immediately
after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, about 536
years before Christ. Ezra (who, according to the Jewish commenta-
tors, is the same person as is called Esdras in the Apocrypha), was
one of the persons who returned, and who, it is probable, wrote the
account of that affair.
Nehemiah, whose book follows next to Ezra, was another of the
returned persons; and who, it is also probable, wrote the account of
the same affair in the book that bears his name. But these accounts
are nothing to us, nor to any other persons, unless it be to the Jews, as
a part of the history of their nation; and there is just as much of the
word of God in these books as there is in any of the histories of
France, or Rapin’s “History of England,” or the history of any other
country.
But even in matters of historical record, neither of those writers
are to be depended upon. In the second chapter of Ezra, the writer
gives a list of the tribes and families, and of the precise number of
souls of each, that returned from Babylon to Jerusalem: and this en-
rolment of the persons so returned appears to have been one of the
principal objects for writing the book; but in this there is an error that
destroys the intention of the undertaking.
The writer begins his enrolment in the following manner, chap.
ii., ver. 3: “The children of Parosh, two thousand one hundred sev-
enty and two.” Ver. 4, “The children of Shephatiah, three hundred
seventy and two.” And in this manner he proceeds through all the
families; and in the 64th verse, he makes a total, and says, “The
whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hun-
dred and threescore.”
Thomas Paine 92
But whoever will take the trouble of casting up the several par-
ticulars will find that the total is but 29,818; so that the error is
12,542.2 What certainty, then, can there be in the Bible for anything?
Nehemiah, in like manner, gives a list of the returned families,
and of the number of each family. He begins, as in Ezra, by saying,
chap. vii., ver. 8, “The children of Parosh, two thousand a hundred
seven and two;” and so on through all the families. The list differs in
several of the particulars from that of Ezra. In the 66th verse,
Nehemiah makes a total, and says, as Ezra had said, “The whole con-
gregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and
threescore.” But the particulars of this list makes a total of but
31,089, so that the error here is 11,271. These writers may do well
enough for Bible-makers, but not for anything where truth and exact-
ness is necessary.
The next book in course is the book of Esther. If Madame Esther
thought it any honor to offer herself as a kept mistress to Ahasuerus,
or as a rival to Queen Vashti, who had refused to come to a drunken
king in the midst of a drunken company, to be made a show of, (for
the account says they had been drinking seven days and were merry),
let Esther and Mordecai look to that; it is no business of ours; at least
it is none of mine; besides which the story has a great deal the ap-
pearance of being fabulous, and is also anonymous. I pass on to the
book of Job.
The book of Job differs in character from all the books we have
hitherto passed over. Treachery and murder make no part of this
book; it is the meditations of a mind strongly impressed with the vi-
cissitudes of human life, and by turns sinking under, and struggling
against the pressure.
It is a highly wrought composition, between willing submission
and involuntary discontent, and shows man, as he sometimes is,
more disposed to be resigned than he is capable of being. Patience
has but a small share in the character of the person of whom the book
treats; on the contrary, his grief is often impetuous, but he still en-
deavors to keep a guard upon it, and seems determined in the midst
of accumulating ills, to impose upon himself the hard duty of con-
tentment.
I have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of Job in the

former part of the “Age of Reason,” but without knowing at that time
what I have learned since, which is, that from all the evidence that
can be collected the book of Job does not belong to the Bible.
I have seen the opinion of two Hebrew commentators, Abenezra
and Spinoza, upon this subject. They both say that the book of Job
carries no internal evidence of being a Hebrew book; that the genius
of the composition and the drama of the piece are not Hebrew; that it
has been translated from another language into Hebrew, and that the
author of the book was a Gentile; that the character represented un-
der the name of Satan (which is the first and only time this name is
mentioned in the Bible) does not correspond to any Hebrew idea, and
that the two convocations which the Deity is supposed to have made
of those whom the poem calls sons of God, and the familiarity which
this supposed Satan is stated to have with the Deity, are in the same
case.
It may also be observed, that the book shows itself to be the pro-
duction of a mind cultivated in science, which the Jews, so far from
being famous for, were very ignorant of. The allusions to objects of
natural philosophy are frequent and strong, and are of a different cast
to anything in the books known to be Hebrew.
The astronomical names, Pleiades, Orion, and Arcturus, are
Greek and not Hebrew names, and it does not appear from anything
that is to be found in the Bible, that the Jews knew anything of as-
tronomy or that they studied it; they had no translation of those
names into their own language, but adopted the names as they found
them in the poem.
That the Jews did translate the literary productions of the Gen-
tile nations into the Hebrew language, and mix them with their own,
is not a matter of doubt; the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs is an evi-
dence of this; it is there said, v. I: “The words of King Lemuel, the
prophecy that his mother taught him.” This verse stands as a preface
to the Proverbs that follow, and which are not the proverbs of Solo-
mon, but of Lemuel; and this Lemuel was not one of the kings of Is-
rael, nor of Judah, but of some other country, and consequently a
Gentile.
Thomas Paine 94
The Jews, however, have adopted his proverbs, and as they can-
not give any account who the author of the book of Job was, nor how
they came by the book, and as it differs in character from the Hebrew
writings, and stands totally unconnected with every other book and
chapter in the Bible, before it and after it, it has all the circumstantial
evidence of being originally a book of the Gentiles.3
The Bible-makers and those regulators of time, the chronolo-
gists, appear to have been at a loss where to place and how to dispose
of the book of Job; for it contains no one historical circumstance, nor
allusion to any, that might determine its place in the Bible.
But it would not have answered the purpose of these men to
have informed the world of their ignorance, and, therefore, they have
affixed it to the era of 1520 years before Christ, which is during the
time the Israelites were in Egypt, and for which they have just as
much authority and no more than I should have for saying it was a
thousand years before that period. The probability, however, is that it
is older than any book in the Bible; and it is the only one that can be
read without indignation or disgust.
We know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world (as it is
called) was before the time of the Jews, whose practice has been to
calumniate and blacken the character of all other nations; and it is
from the Jewish accounts that we have learned to call them heathens.
But, as far as we know to the contrary, they were a just and moral
people, and not addicted, like the Jews, to cruelty and revenge, but of
whose profession of faith we are unacquainted. It appears to have
been their custom to personify both virtue and vice by statues and
images, as is done nowadays both by statuary and by paintings; but it
does not follow from this that they worshiped them, any more than
we do.
I pass on to the book of Psalms, of which it is not necessary to
make much observation. Some of them are moral, and others are
very revengeful; and the greater part relates to certain local circum-
stances of the Jewish nation at the time they were written, with which
we have nothing to do.
It is, however, an error or an imposition to call them the Psalms
of David. They are a collection, as song-books are nowadays, from
different song-writers, who lived at different times. The 137th Psalm

could not have been written till more than 400 years after the time of
David, because it was written in commemoration of an event, the
captivity of the Jews in Babylon, which did not happen till that dis-
tance of time. “By the rivers of Babylon we sat down; yea, we wept,
when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows,
in the midst thereof; for there they that carried us away captive re-
quired of us a song, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.” As a
man would say to an American, or to a Frenchman, or to an English-
man, “Sing us one of your American songs, or of your French songs,
or of your English songs.”
This remark, with respect to the time this Psalm was written, is
of no other use than to show (among others already mentioned) the
general imposition the world has been under in respect to the authors
of the Bible.
No regard has been paid to time, place and circumstance, and
the names of persons have been affixed to the several books, which it
was as impossible they should write as that a man should walk in
procession at his own funeral.
The Book of Proverbs. These, like the Psalms, are a collection,
and that from authors belonging to other nations than those of the
Jewish nation, as I have shown in the observations upon the book of
Job; besides which some of the proverbs ascribed to Solomon did not
appear till two hundred and fifty years after the death of Solomon;
for it is said in the 1st verse of the 25th chapter, “These are also prov-
erbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied
out.”
It was two hundred and fifty years from the time of Solomon to
the time of Hezekiah. When a man is famous and his name is abroad,
he is made the putative father of things he never said or did, and this,
most probably, has been the case with Solomon. It appears to have
been the fashion of that day to make proverbs, as it is now to make
jest-books and father them upon those who never saw them.
The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to
Solomon, and that with much reason, if not with truth. It is written as
the solitary reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such as Solomon
Thomas Paine 96
was, who, looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy, cries out,
“All is vanity!”
A great deal of the metaphor and of the sentiment is obscure,
most probably by translation; but enough is left to show they were
strongly pointed in the original.* From what is transmitted to us of
the character of Solomon, he was witty, ostentatious, dissolute, and
at last melancholy. He lived fast, and died, tired of the world, at the
age of fifty-eight years.
Seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines are worse
than none, and, however it may carry with it the appearance of
heightened enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection by leav-
ing it no point to fix upon. Divided love is never happy. This was the
case with Solomon, and if he could not, with all his pretentious to
wisdom, discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the mortifica-
tion he afterward endured.
In this point of view, his preaching is unnecessary, because, to
know the consequences, it is only necessary to know the case. Seven
hundred wives, and three hundred concubines would have stood in
place of the whole book. It was needless, after this, to say that all was
vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive happiness
from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.
To be happy in old age, it is necessary that we accustom our-
selves to objects that can accompany the mind all the way through
life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of
pleasure is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is
but little better; whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and me-
chanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in
spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests and of superstition, the study
of these things is the true theology; it teaches man to know and to ad-
mire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and
are unchangeable and of divine origin.
Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect that his mind
was ever young, his temper ever serene; science, that never grows
gray, was always his mistress. He was never without an object, for
* Those that look out of the window shall be darkened, is an obscure fig-
ure in translation for loss of sight. – Author.
when we cease to have an object, we become like an invalid in a hos-

pital waiting for death.
Solomon’s Songs are amorous and foolish enough, but which
wrinkled fanaticism has called divine. The compilers of the Bible
have placed these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes, and the chro-
nologists have affixed to them the era of 1014 years before Christ, at
which time Solomon, according to the same chronology, was nine-
teen years of age, and was then forming his seraglio of wives and
concubines.
The Bible-makers and the chronologists should have managed
this matter a little better, and either have said nothing about the time,
or chosen a time less inconsistent with the supposed divinity of those
songs; for Solomon was then in the honeymoon of one thousand de-
baucheries.
It should also have occurred to them that, as he wrote, if he did
write, the book of Ecclesiastes long after these songs, and in which
he exclaims, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that he included
those songs in that description. This is the more probable, because he
says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes, chap. ii. ver. 8, “I gat me
men singers and women singers (most probably to sing those songs),
as musical instruments and that of all sorts; and behold, (ver. II), all
was vanity and vexation of spirit.” The compilers, however, have
done their work but by halves, for as they have given us the songs,
they should have given us the tunes, that we might sing them.
The books called the Books of the Prophets fill up all the re-
maining parts of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning
with Isaiah, and ending with Malachi, of which I have given you a
list in my observations upon Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets,
all of whom, except the three last, lived within the time the books of
Kings and Chronicles were written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah,
are mentioned in the history of those books. I shall begin with those
two, reserving what I have to say on the general character of the men
called prophets to another part of the work.
Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to
Isaiah will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions
Thomas Paine 98
ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, ex-
cept a short historical part and a few sketches of history in two or
three of the first chapters, is one continued, incoherent, bombastical
rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute
of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for
writing such stuff; it is (at least in the translation) that kind of compo-
sition and false taste that is properly called prose run mad.
The historical part begins at the 36th chapter, and is continued to
the end of the 39th chapter. It relates to some matters that are said to
have passed during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah; at which
time Isaiah lived. This fragment of history begins and ends abruptly;
it has not the least connection with the chapter that precedes it, nor
with that which follows it, nor with any other in the book.
It is probable that Isaiah wrote this fragment himself, because he
was an actor in the circumstances it treats of; but, except this part,
there are scarcely two chapters that have any connection with each
other; one is entitled, at the beginning of the first verse, “The burden
of Babylon;” another, “The burden of Moab;” another “The burden
of Damascus;” another, “The burden of Egypt;” another, “The bur-
den of the desert of the sea;” another, “The burden of the valley of vi-
sion”- as you would say, “The story of the Knight of the Burning
Mountain,” “The story of Cinderella or The Glass Slipper”; the story
of “The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods,” etc., etc.
I have already shown, in the instance of the two last verses of
Chronicles, and the three first in Ezra, that the compilers of the Bible
mixed and confounded the writings of different authors with each
other, which alone, were there no other cause, is sufficient to destroy
the authenticity of any compilation, because it is more than presump-
tive evidence that the compilers were ignorant who the authors were.
A very glaring instance of this occurs in the book ascribed to Isaiah;
the latter part of the 44th chapter and the beginning of the 45th, so far
from having been written by Isaiah, could only have been written by
some person who lived at least a hundred and fifty years after Isaiah
was dead.
These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the
Jews to return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, to rebuild
Jerusalem and the temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of the
44th chapter and the beginning of the 45th, are in the following
words: “That saith of Cyrus; He is my shepherd and shall perform
all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shall be built, and to
the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his
annointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue na-
tions before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before
him the two-leaved gates and the gates shall not be shut; I will go be-
fore thee,” etc.
What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose
this book upon the world as the writing of Isaiah, when Isaiah, ac-
cording to their own chronology, died soon after the death of Heze-
kiah, which was 693 years before Christ, and the decree of Cyrus, in
favor of the Jews returning to Jerusalem, was, according to the same
chronology, 536 years before Christ, which is a distance of time be-
tween the two of 162 years.
I do not suppose that the compilers of the Bible made these
books, but rather that they picked up some loose anonymous essays,
and put them together under the names of such authors as best suited
their purpose. They have encouraged the imposition, which is next to
inventing it, for it was impossible but they must have observed it.
When we see the studied craft of the Scripture-makers, in mak-
ing every part of this romantic book of schoolboy’s eloquence bend
to the monstrous idea of a Son of God begotten by a ghost on the
body of a virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in sus-
pecting them of. Every phrase and circumstance is marked with the
barbarous hand of superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it
was impossible they could have. The head of every chapter and the
top of every page are blazoned with the names of Christ and the
Church, that the unwary reader might suck in the error before he
began to read.
“Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,” Isaiah, chap.
vii. ver. 14, has been interpreted to mean the person called Jesus
Christ, and his mother Mary, and has been echoed through Christen-
dom for more than a thousand years; and such has been the rage of
this opinion that scarcely a spot in it but has been stained with blood,
and marked with desolation in consequence of it. Though it is not my
Thomas Paine 100
intention to enter into controversy on subjects of this kind, but to

confine myself to show that the Bible is spurious, and thus, by taking
away the foundation, to overthrow at once the whole structure of su-
perstition raised thereon, I will, however, stop a moment to expose
the fallacious application of this passage.
Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to
whom this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only to
show the misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more refer-
ence to Christ and his mother than it has to me and my mother.
The story is simply this: The king of Syria and the king of Israel,
(I have already mentioned that the Jews were split into two nations,
one of which was called Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem,
and the other Israel), made war jointly against Ahaz, king of Judah,
and marched their armies toward Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people be-
came alarmed, and the account says, verse 2, “And his heart was
moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are
moved with the wind.”
In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and
assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the proph-
ets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and to sat-
isfy Ahaz that this should be the case, tells him to ask a sign. This, the
account says, Ahaz declined doing, giving as a reason that he would
not tempt the Lord upon which Isaiah, who is the speaker, says, ver.
14, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign, Behold, a vir-
gin shall conceive and bear a son”; and the 16th verse says, ”For be-
fore this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the
land that thou abhorrest (or dreadest, meaning Syria and the king-
dom of Israel), shall be forsaken of both her kings.” Here then was
the sign, and the time limited for the completion of the assurance or
promise, namely, before this child should know to refuse the evil and
choose the good.
Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary
to him, in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet and
the consequence thereof, to take measures to make this sign appear.
It certainly was not a difficult thing, in any time of the world, to find
a girl with child, or to make her so, and perhaps Isaiah knew of one
beforehand; for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day were
any more to be trusted than the priests of this. Be that, however, as it

may, he says in the next chapter, ver. 2, “And I took unto me faithful
witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of
Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and
bare a son.”
Here, then, is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and
this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story, that
the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interests of
priests in later times, have founded a theory which they call the Gos-
pel; and have applied this story to signify the person they call Jesus
Christ, begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the
body of a woman, engaged in marriage, and afterward married,
whom they call a virgin, 700 years after this foolish story was told; a
theory which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to disbelieve, and to
say, is as fabulous and as false as God is true.*
But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah, we have
only to attend to the sequel of this story, which, though it is passed
over in silence in the book of Isaiah, is related in the 28th chapter of
the second Chronicles, and which is, that instead of these two kings
failing in their attempt against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had
pretended to foretell in the name of the Lord, they succeeded; Ahaz
was defeated and destroyed, a hundred and twenty thousand of his
people were slaughtered, Jerusalem was plundered, and two hundred
thousand women, and sons and daughters, carried into captivity.
Thus much for this lying prophet and impostor, Isaiah, and the book
of falsehoods that bears his name.
I pass on to the book of Jeremiah. This prophet, as he is called,
lived in the time that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, in the
reign of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah; and the suspicion was
strong against him that he was a traitor in the interests of
Nebuchadnezzar. Everything relating to Jeremiah shows him to have
been a man of an equivocal character; in his metaphor of the potter
* In the 14th verse of the 7th chapter, it is said that the child should be
called Immanuel; but this name was not given to either of the children
otherwise than as a character which the word signifies. That of the
prophetess was called Maher-shalal-hash-baz, and that of Mary was
called Jesus. – Author
Thomas Paine 102
and the clay, chap. xviii., he guards his prognostications in such a

crafty manner as always to leave himself a door to escape by, in case
the event should be contrary to what he had predicted.
In the 7th and 8th verses of that chapter he makes the Almighty
to say, “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and con-
cerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and destroy it. If
that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I
will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.” Here was a
proviso against one side of the case; now for the other side.
Verses 9 and 10, “And at what instant I shall speak concerning a
nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it do evil
in my sight, that it obey not my voice; then I shall repent of the good
wherewith I said I would benefit them.” Here is a proviso against the
other side; and, according to this plan of prophesying, a prophet
could never be wrong, however mistaken the Almightymight be.
This sort of absurd subterfuge, and this manner of speaking of the
Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing
but the stupidity of the Bible.
As to the authenticity of the book, it is only necessary to read it,
in order to decide positively that, though some passages recorded
therein may have been spoken by Jeremiah, he is not the author of the
book. The historical parts, if they can be called by that name, are in
the most confused condition; the same events are several times re-
peated, and that in a manner different, and sometimes in contradic-
tion to each other; and this disorder runs even to the last chapter,
where the history upon which the greater part of the book has been
employed begins anew, and ends abruptly.
The book has all the appearance of being a medley of uncon-
nected anecdotes respecting persons and things of that time, col-
lected together in the same rude manner as if the various and
contradictory accounts that are to be found in a bundle of newspa-
pers respecting persons and things of the present day, were put to-
gether without date, order, or explanation. I will give two or three
examples of this kind.
It appears, from the account of the 37th chapter, that the army of
Nebuchadnezzar, which is called the army of the Chaldeans, had be-
sieged Jerusalem some time, and on their hearing that the army of
Pharaoh, of Egypt, was marching against them they raised the siege
and retreated for a time.
It may here be proper to mention, in order to understand this
confused history, that Nebuchadnezzar had besieged and taken Jeru-
salem during the reign of Jehoiakim, the predecessor of Zedekiah;
and that it was Nebuchadnezzar who had made Zedekiah king, or
rather viceroy; and that this second siege, of which the book of Jere-
miah treats, was in consequence of the revolt of Zedekiah against
Nebuchadnezzar. This will in some measure account for the suspi-
cion that affixes to Jeremiah of being a traitor and in the interest of
Nebuchadnezzar; whom Jeremiah calls, in the 43rd chapter, ver. 10,
the servant of God. The 11th verse of this chapter (the 37th), says,
“And it came to pass, that, when the army of the Chaldeans was bro-
ken up from Jerusalem, for fear of Pharaoh’s army, that Jeremiah
went forth out of Jerusalem, to go (as this account states) into the
land of Benjamin, to separate himself thence in the midst of the peo-
ple, and when he was in the gate of Benjamin, a captain of the ward
was there, whose name was Irijah, the son of Shelemiah, the son of
Hananiah, and he took Jeremiah the prophet, saying, Thou fallest
away to the Chaldeans. Then said Jeremiah, It is false; I fall not away
to the Chaldeans.” Jeremiah being thus stopped and accused, was,
after being examined, committed to prison on suspicion of being a
traitor, where he remained, as is stated in the last verse of this chap-
ter.
But the next chapter gives an account of the imprisonment of
Jeremiah which has no connection with this account, but ascribes his
imprisonment to another circumstance, and for which we must go
back to the 21st chapter. It is there stated, ver. 1, that Zedekiah sent
Pashur, the son of Malchiah, and Zephaniah, the son of Maaseiah the
priest, to Jeremiah to inquire of him concerning Nebuchadnezzar,
whose army was then before Jerusalem; and Jeremiah said unto
them, ver. 8 and 9, “Thus saith the Lord, Behold I set before you the
way of life, and the way of death; he that abideth in this city shall die
by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence; but he that
goeth out and falleth to the Chaldeans that besiege you, he shall live,
and his life shall be unto him for a prey.”
This interview and conference breaks off abruptly at the end of
the 10th verse of the 21st chapter; and such is the disorder of this
book that we have to pass over sixteen chapters, upon various sub-
jects, in order to come at the continuation and event of this confer-
Thomas Paine 104
ence, and this brings us to the first verse of the 38th chapter, as I have
just mentioned.
The 38th chapter opens with saying, “Then Shepatiah, the son of
Mattan; Gedaliah, the son of Pashur; and Jucal, the son of
Shelemiah; and Pashur, the son of Malchiah (here are more persons
mentioned than in the 21st chapter), heard the words that Jeremiah
had spoken unto all the people, saying, Thus saith the Lord, He that
remaineth in this city, shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by
the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the Chaldeans shall live, for
he shall have his life for prey, and shall live” (which are the words of
the conference), therefore, (they say to Zedekiah), “We beseech thee,
let us put this man to death, for thus he weakeneth the hands of the
men of war that remain in this city, and the hands of all the people in
speaking such words unto them; for this man seeketh not the welfare
of the people, but the hurt.” And at the 6th verse it is said, “Then took
they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of Malchiah.”
These two accounts are different and contradictory. The one as-
cribes his imprisonment to his attempt to escape out of the city: the
other to his preaching and prophesying in the city; the one to his be-
ing seized by the guard at the gate; the other to his being accused be-
fore Zedekiah, by the conferees.4
In the next chapter (the 39th) we have another instance of the
disordered state of this book; for notwithstanding the siege of the
city by Nebuchadnezzar has been the subject of several of the pre-
ceding chapters, particularly the 37th and 38th, the 39th chapter be-
gins as if not a word had been said upon the subject; and as if the
reader was to be informed of every particular concerning it, for it be-
gins with saying, verse 1, “In the ninth year of Zedekiah, king of Ju-
dah, in the tenth month, came Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and
all his army, against Jerusalem, and they besieged it,” etc.
But the instance in the last chapter (the 52nd ) is still more glar-
ing, for though the story has been told over and over again, this chap-
ter still supposes the reader not to know anything of it, for it begins
by saying, ver. 1, “Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he
began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem, and his
mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.
(Ver. 4,) And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth
month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar, king of

Babylon, came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and pitched
against it, and built forts against it,” etc.
It is not possible that any one man, and more particularly Jere-
miah, could have been the writer of this book. The errors are such as
could not have been committed by any person sitting down to com-
pose a work. Were I, or any other man, to write in such a disordered
manner, nobody would read what was written; and everybody would
suppose that the writer was in a state of insanity. The only way, there-
fore, to account for this disorder is, that the book is a medley of de-
tached, unauthenticated anecdotes, put together by some stupid
book-maker, under the name of Jeremiah, because many of them re-
fer to him and to the circumstances of the times he lived in.
Of the duplicity, and of the false prediction of Jeremiah, I shall
mention two instances, and then proceed to review the remainder of
the Bible.
It appears from the 38th chapter, that when Jeremiah was in
prison, Zedekiah sent for him, and at this interview, which was pri-
vate, Jeremiah pressed it strongly on Zedekiah to surrender himself
to the enemy. “If,” says he (ver. 17,) “thou wilt assuredly go forth
unto the king of Babylon’s princes, then thy soul shall live,” etc.
Zedekiah was apprehensive that what passed at this conference
should be known, and he said to Jeremiah (ver. 25), “If the princes
[meaning those of Judah] hear that I have talked with thee, and they
come unto thee, and say unto thee, Declare unto us now what thou
hast said unto the king; hide it not from us, and we will not put thee to
death; and also what the king said unto thee; then thou shalt say unto
them, I presented my supplication before the king, that he would not
cause me to return to Jonathan’s house to die there. Then came all the
princes unto Jeremiah, and asked him: and he told them according to
all the words the king had commanded.”
Thus, this man of God, as he is called, could tell a lie or very
strongly prevaricate, when he supposed it would answer his purpose;
for certainly he did not go to Zedekiah to make his supplication, nei-
ther did he make it; he went because he was sent for, and he em-
ployed that opportunity to advise Zedekiah to surrender himself to
Nebuchadnezzar.
Thomas Paine 106
In the 34th chapter is a prophecy of Jeremiah to Zedekiah, in

these words (ver. 2), “Thus saith the Lord, Behold I will give this city
into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire;
and thou shalt not escape out of his hand, but shalt surely be taken,
and delivered into his hand; and thine eyes shall behold the eyes of
the king of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth,
and thou shalt go to Babylon. Yet hear the word of the Lord, O
Zedekiah, king of Judah, Thus saith the Lord, of thee, Thou shalt not
die by the sword, but thou shalt die in peace; and with the burnings of
thy fathers, the former kings which were before thee, so shall they
burn odors for thee, and they will lament thee, saying, Ah, lord; for I
have pronounced the word, saith the Lord.”
Now, instead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of the king of Bab-
ylon, and speaking with him mouth to mouth, and dying in peace,
and with the burning of odors, as at the funeral of his fathers, (as Jer-
emiah had declared the Lord himself had pronounced), the reverse,
according to the 52nd chapter, was the case; it is there said (ver.10),
“And the king of Babylon slew the son of Zedekiah before his eyes;
Then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and the king of Babylon bound
him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till
the day of his death.” What, then, can we say of these prophets, but
that they were impostors and liars?
As for Jeremiah, he experienced none of those evils. He was
taken into favor by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave him in charge to the
captain of the guard (chap. xxxix. ver. 12), “Take him (said he) and
look well to him, and do him no harm; but do unto him even as he
shall say unto thee.” Jeremiah joined himself afterward to
Nebuchadnezzar, and went about prophesying for him against the
Egyptians, who had marched to the relief of Jerusalem while it was
besieged. Thus much for another of the lying prophets, and the book
that bears his name.
I have been the more particular in treating of the books ascribed
to Isaiah and Jeremiah, because those two are spoken of in the books
of Kings and Chronicles, which the others are not. The remainder of
the books ascribed to the men called prophets I shall not trouble my-
self much about, but take them collectively into the observations I
shall offer on the character of the men styled prophets.
In the former part of “The Age of Reason,” I have said that the
word prophet was the Bible word for poet, and that the flights and
metaphors of Jewish poets have been foolishly erected into what are
now called prophecies. I am sufficiently justified in this opinion, not
only because the books called the prophecies are written in poetical
language, but because there is no word in the Bible, except it be the
word prophet, that describes what we mean by a poet.
I have also said, that the word signifies a performer upon musi-
cal instruments, of which I have given some instances, such as that of
a company of prophets prophesying with psalteries, with tabrets,
with pipes, with harps, etc., and that Saul prophesied with them, I.
Sam., chap x., ver. 5.
It appears from this passage, and from other parts in the book of
Samuel, that the word prophet was confined to signify poetry and
music; for the person who was supposed to have a visionary insight
into concealed things, was not a prophet but a seer* (I. Sam., chap.
ix., ver. 9); and it was not till after the word seer went out of use
(which most probably was when Saul banished those he called wiz-
ards) that the profession of the seer, or the art of seeing, became in-
corporated into the word prophet.
According to the modern meaning of the word prophet and
prophesying, it signifies foretelling events to a great distance of
time, and it became necessary to the inventors of the Gospel to give it
this latitude of meaning, in order to apply or to stretch what they call
the prophecies of the Old Testament to the times of the New; but ac-
cording to the Old Testament, the prophesying of the seer, and after-
ward of the prophet, so far as the meaning of the word seer
incorporated into that of prophet, had reference only to things of the
time then passing, or very closely connected with it, such as the
event of a battle they were going to engage in, or of a journey, or of
any enterprise they were going to undertake, or of any circumstance
then pending, or of any difficulty they were then in; all of which had
* I know not what is the Hebrew word that corresponds to the word seer in
English; but I observe it is translated into French by la voyant, from the
verb voir, to see; and which means the person who sees, or the seer.
– Author
Thomas Paine 108
immediate reference to themselves (as in the case already mentioned

of Ahaz and Isaiah with respect to the expression, “Behold a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son”) and not to any distant future time.
It was that kind of prophesying that corresponds to what we call
fortune-telling, such as casting nativities, predicting riches, fortu-
nate or unfortunate marriages, conjuring for lost goods, etc.; and it is
the fraud of the Christian Church, not that of the Jews, and the igno-
rance and the superstition of modern, not that of ancient times, that
elevated those poetical, musical, conjuring, dreaming, strolling gen-
try into the rank they have since had.
But, besides this general character of all the prophets, they had
also a particular character. They were in parties, and they prophesied
for or against, according to the party they were with, as the poetical
and political writers of the present day write in defense of the party
they associate with against the other.
After the Jews were divided into two nations, that of Judah and
that of Israel, each party had its prophets, who abused and accused
each other of being false prophets, lying prophets, impostors, etc.
The prophets of the party of Judah prophesied against the proph-
ets of the party of Israel; and those of the party of Israel against those
of Judah. This party prophesying showed itself immediately on the
separation under the first two rival kings, Rehoboam and Jeroboam.
The prophet that cursed or prophesied against the altar that Jero-
boam had built in Bethel, was of the party of Judah, where
Rehoboam was king; and he was waylaid on his return home, by a
prophet of the party of Israel, who said unto him (I. Kings, chap.
xiii.), “Art thou the man of God that came from Judah? and he said, I
am.” Then the prophet of the party of Israel said to him, “I am a
prophet also, as thou art (signifying of Judah), and an angel spake
unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with thee
into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water: but (says the
18th verse) he lied unto him.”
This event, however, according to the story, is that the prophet
of Judah never got back to Judah, for he was found dead on the road,
by the contrivance of the prophet of Israel, who, no doubt, was called
a true prophet by his own party, and the prophet of Judah a lying
prophet.
In the third chapter of the second of Kings, a story is related of
prophesying or conjuring that shows, in several particulars, the char-
acter of a prophet. Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and Jehoram, king of
Israel, had for a while ceased their party animosity, and entered into
an alliance; and these two, together with the king of Edom, engaged
in a war against the king of Moab.
After uniting and marching their armies, the story says, they
were in great distress for water; upon which Jehoshaphat said, “Is
there not here a prophet of the Lord, that we may inquire of the Lord
by him? and one of the servants of the king of Israel said, Here is
Elisha.” [Elisha was one of the party of Judah]. “And Jehoshaphat,
the king of Judah, said, The word of the Lord is with him.”
The story then says, that these three kings went down to Elisha;
(who, as I have said, was a Judahmite prophet) saw the king of Israel,
he said unto him, “What have I to do with thee? get thee to the proph-
ets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother. And the king of Is-
rael said unto him, Nay, for the Lord hath called these three kings
together, to deliver them into the hands of Moab.” [Meaning because
of the distress they were in for water.] Upon which Elisha said, “As
the Lord of hosts liveth, before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I
regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, I would not
look towards thee, nor see thee.” Here is all the venom and vulgarity
of a party prophet. We have now to see the performance, or manner
of prophesying.
Ver. 15. “Bring me, (said Elisha,) a minstrel: And it came to
pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon
him.” Here is the farce of the conjurer. Now for the prophecy: “And
Elisha said, [singing most probably to the tune he was playing,] Thus
saith the Lord, make this valley full of ditches;” which was just tell-
ing them what every countryman could have told them, without ei-
ther fiddle or farce, that the way to get water was to dig for it.
But as every conjurer is not famous alike for the same thing, so
neither were those prophets; for though all of them, at least those I
have spoken of, were famous for lying, some of them excelled in
cursing. Elisha, whom I have just mentioned, was a chief in this
Thomas Paine 110
branch of prophesying; it was he that cursed the forty-two children in

the name of the Lord, whom the two she-bears came and devoured.
We are to suppose that those children were of the party of Israel; but
as those who will curse will lie, there is just as much credit to be
given to this story of Elisha’s two she-bears as there is to that of the
Dragon of Wantley, of whom it is said:
“Poor children three devoured he,
That could not with him grapple;
And at one sup he ate them up,
As a man would eat an apple.”
There was another description of men called prophets, that
amused themselves with dreams and visions; but whether by night or
by day we know not. These, if they were not quite harmless, were but
little mischievous. Of this class are:
Ezekiel and Daniel; and the first question upon those books, as
upon all the others, is, are they genuine? that is, were they written by
Ezekiel and Daniel?
Of this there is no proof, but so far as my own opinion goes, I am
more inclined to believe they were, than that they were not. My rea-
sons for this opinion are as follows: First, Because those books do
not contain internal evidence to prove they were not written by
Ezekiel and Daniel, as the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, Sam-
uel,etc., prove they were not written by Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc.
Secondly, Because they were not written till after the Babylo-
nian captivity began, and there is good reason to believe that not any
book in the Bible was written before that period; at least it is
proveable, from the books themselves, as I have already shown, that
they were not written till after the commencement of the Jewish
monarchy.
Thirdly, Because the manner in which the books ascribed to
Ezekiel and Daniel are written agrees with the condition these men
were in at the time of writing them.
Had the numerous commentators and priests, who have fool-
ishly employed or wasted their time in pretending to expound and
unriddle those books, been carried into captivity, as Ezekiel and
Daniel were, it would have greatly improved their intellects in com-
prehending the reason for this mode of writing, and have saved them
the trouble of racking their invention, as they have done, to no pur-
pose; for they would have found that themselves would be obliged to
write whatever they had to write respecting their own affairs or those
of their friends or of their country, in a concealed manner, as those
men have done.
These two books differ from all the rest for it is only these that
are filled with accounts of dreams and visions; and this difference
arose from the situation the writers were in as prisoners of war, or
prisoners of state, in a foreign country, which obliged them to convey
even the most trifling information to each other, and all their political
projects or opinions, in obscure and metaphorical terms. They pre-
tend to have dreamed dreams and seen visions, because it was unsafe
for them to speak facts or plain language.
We ought, however to suppose that the persons to whom they
wrote understood what they meant, and that it was not intended any-
body else should. But these busy commentators and priests have
been puzzling their wits to find out what it was not intended they
should know, and with which they have nothing to do.
Ezekiel and Daniel were carried prisoners to Babylon under the
first captivity, in the time of Jehoiakim, nine years before the second
captivity in the time of Zedekiah.
The Jews were then still numerous, and had considerable force
at Jerusalem; and as it is natural to suppose that men in the situation
of Ezekiel and Daniel would be meditating the recovery of their
country and their own deliverance, it is reasonable to suppose that
the accounts of dreams and visions with which those books are filled,
are no other than a disguised mode of correspondence, to facilitate
those objects- it served them as a cipher or secret alphabet. If they are
not thus, they are tales, reveries, and nonsense; or, at least, a fanciful
way of wearing off the wearisomeness of captivity; but the
presumption is they were the former.
Ezekiel begins his books by speaking of a vision of cherubims
and of a wheel within a wheel, which he says he saw by the river
Chebar, in the land of his captivity. Is it not reasonable to suppose,
that by the cherubims he meant the temple at Jerusalem, where they
had figures of cherubims? and by a wheel within a wheel (which, as a
Thomas Paine 112
figure, has always been understood to signify political contrivance)

the project or means of recovering Jerusalem?
In the latter part of this book, he supposes himself transported to
Jerusalem and into the temple; and he refers back to the vision on the
river Chebar, and says (chapter xliii, verse 3), that this last vision was
like the vision on the river Chebar; which indicates that those pre-
tended dreams and visions had for their object the recovery of Jeru-
salem, and nothing further.
As to the romantic interpretations and applications, wild as the
dreams and visions they undertake to explain, which commentators
and priests have made of those books, that of converting them into
things which they call prophecies, and making them bend to times
and circumstances as far remote even as the present day, it shows the
fraud or the extreme folly to which credulity or priestcraft can go.
Scarcely anything can be more absurd than to suppose that men
situated as Ezekiel and Daniel were, whose country was overrun and
in the possession of the enemy, all their friends and relations in cap-
tivity abroad, or in slavery at home, or massacred, or in continual
danger of it; scarcely anything, I say, can be more absurd, than to
suppose that such men should find nothing to do but that of employ-
ing their time and their thoughts about what was to happen to other
nations a thousand or two thousand years after they were dead; at the
same time, nothing is more natural than that they should meditate the
recovery of Jerusalem, and their own deliverance and that this was
the sole object of all the obscure and apparently frantic writings
contained in those books.
In this sense, the mode of writing used in those two books, being
forced by necessity, and not adopted by choice, is not irrational; but,
if we are to use the books as prophecies, they are false. In the 29th
chapter of Ezekiel, speaking of Egypt, it is said, (ver. II), “No foot of
man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it; nei-
ther shall it be inhabited for forty years.” This is what never came to
pass, and consequently it is false, as all the books I have already re-
viewed are. I here close this part of the subject.
In the former part of “The Age of Reason” I have spoken of Jo-
nah, and of the story of him and the whale. A fit story for ridicule, if it
was written to be believed; or of laughter, if it was intended to try
what credulity could swallow; for if it could swallow Jonah and the
whale, it could swallow anything.
But, as is already shown in the observations on the book of Job
and of Proverbs, it is not always certain which of the books in the Bi-
ble are originally Hebrew, or only translations from the books of the
Gentiles into Hebrew; and as the book of Jonah, so far from treating
of the affairs of the Jews, says nothing upon that subject, but treats
altogether of the Gentiles, it is more probable that it is a book of the
Gentiles than of the Jews, and that it has been written as a fable, to
expose the nonsense and satirize the vicious and malignant character
of a Bible prophet, or a predicting priest.
Jonah is represented, first, as a disobedient prophet, running
away from his mission, and taking shelter aboard a vessel of the Gen-
tiles, bound from Joppa to Tarshish; as if he ignorantly supposed, by
some paltry contrivance, he could hide himself where God could not
find him. The vessel is overtaken by a storm at sea, and the mariners,
all of whom are Gentiles, believing it to be a judgment, on account of
some one on board who had committed a crime, agreed to cast lots to
discover the offender, and the lot fell upon Jonah. But, before this,
they had cast all their wares and merchandise overboard to lighten
the vessel, while Jonah, like a stupid fellow, was fast asleep in the
hold.
After the lot had designated Jonah to be the offender, they ques-
tioned him to know who and what he was? and he told them he was a
Hebrew; and the story implies that he confessed himself to be guilty.
But these Gentiles, instead of sacrificing him at once, without
pity or mercy, as a company of Bible prophets or priests would have
done by a Gentile in the same case, and as it is related Samuel had
done by Agag and Moses by the women and children, they endeav-
ored to save him, though at the risk of their own lives, for the account
says, “Nevertheless (that is, though Jonah was a Jew and a foreigner,
and the cause of all their misfortunes and the loss of their cargo,) the
men rowed hard to bring it (the boat) to land, but they could not for
the sea wrought and was tempestuous against them.”
Still, they were unwilling to put the fate of the lot into execution,
and they cried (says the account) unto the Lord, saying, (v. 14,) “We
beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this
Thomas Paine 114
man’s life, and lay not upon us innocent blood; for thou, O Lord, hast
done as it pleased thee.” Meaning, thereby, that they did not pre-
sume to judge Jonah guilty, since that he might be innocent; but that
they considered the lot that had fallen to him as a decree of God, or as
it pleased God.
The address of this prayer shows that the Gentiles worshipped
one Supreme Being, and that they were not idolaters, as the Jews rep-
resented them to be. But the storm still continuing and the danger in-
creasing, they put the fate of the lot into execution, and cast Jonah
into the sea, where, according to the story, a great fish swallowed
him up whole and alive.
We have now to consider Jonah securely housed from the storm
in the fish’s belly. Here we are told that he prayed; but the prayer is a
made-up prayer, taken from various parts of the Psalms, without any
connection or consistency, and adapted to the distress, but not at all
to the condition that Jonah was in. It is such a prayer as a Gentile,
who might know something of the Psalms, could copy out for him.
This circumstance alone, were there no other, is sufficient to in-
dicate that the whole is a made-up story. The prayer, however, is sup-
posed to have answered the purpose, and the story goes on (taking up
at the same time the cant language of a Bible prophet), saying: (chap.
ii, ver. 10,) “And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jo-
nah upon the dry land.”
Jonah then received a second mission to Nineveh, with which he
sets out; and we have now to consider him as a preacher. The distress
he is represented to have suffered, the remembrance of his own dis-
obedience as the cause of it, and the miraculous escape he is sup-
posed to have had, were sufficient, one would conceive, to have
impressed him with sympathy and benevolence in the execution of
his mission; but, instead of this, he enters the city with denunciation
and malediction in his mouth, crying: (chap. iii. ver. 4,): “Yet forty
days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”
We have now to consider this supposed missionary in the last act
of his mission; and here it is that the malevolent spirit of a Bi-
ble-prophet, or of a predicting priest, appears in all that blackness of
character that men ascribe to the being they call the devil.
Having published his predictions, he withdrew, says the story, to

the east side of the city. But for what? Not to contemplate, in retire-
ment, the mercy of his Creator to himself or to others, but to wait,
with malignant impatience, the destruction of Nineveh.
It came to pass, however, as the story relates that the Ninevites
reformed, and that God, according to the Bible phrase, repented Him
of the evil He had said He would do unto them, and did it not. This,
saith the first verse of the last chapter, “displeased Jonah exceed-
ingly, and he was very angry.” His obdurate heart would rather that
all Nineveh should be destroyed, and every soul, young and old, per-
ish in its ruins, than that his prediction should not be fulfilled.
To expose the character of a prophet still more, a gourd is made
to grow up in the night, that promised him an agreeable shelter from
the heat of the sun, in the place to which he had retired, and the next
morning it dies.
Here the rage of the prophet becomes excessive, and he is ready
to destroy himself. “It is better, said he, for me to die than to live.”
This brings on a supposed expostulation between the Almighty and
the prophet, in which the former says, “Doest thou well to be angry
for the gourd? And Jonah said, I do well to be angry even unto death;
Then, said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou
hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night,
and perished in a night; and should not I spare Nineveh, that great
city, in which are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot
discern between their right hand and their left hand?”
Here is both the winding up of the satire and the moral of the fa-
ble. As a satire, it strikes against the character of all the Bible proph-
ets, and against all the indiscriminate judgments upon men, women,
and children, with which this lying book, the Bible, is crowded; such
as Noah’s flood, the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomor-
rah, the extirpation of the Canaanites, even to the sucking infants,
and women with child, because the same reflection, that there are
more than threescore thousand persons that cannot discern between
their right hand and their left hand, meaning young children, apply
to all the cases. It satirizes also the supposed partiality of the Creator
for one nation more than for another.
Thomas Paine 116
As a moral, it preaches against the malevolent spirit of predic-

tion; for as certainly as a man predicts ill, he becomes inclined to
wish it. The pride of having his judgment right hardens his heart, till
at last he beholds with satisfaction, or sees with disappointment, the
accomplishment or the failure of his predictions.
The book ends with the same kind of strong and well-directed
point against prophets, prophecies, and indiscriminate judgment, as
the chapter that Benjamin Franklin made for the Bible, about Abra-
ham and the stranger, ends against the intolerant spirit of religious
persecution. Thus much for the book of Jonah.
Of the poetical parts of the Bible, that are called prophecies, I
have spoken in the former part of “The Age of Reason,” and already
in this, where I have said that the word prophet is the Bible word for
poet, and that the flights and metaphors of those poets, many of
which have become obscure by the lapse of time and the change of
circumstances, have been ridiculously erected into things called
prophecies, and applied to purposes the writers never thought of.
When a priest quotes any of those passages, he unriddles it
agreeably to his own views, and imposes that explanation upon his
congregation as the meaning of the writer. The whore of Babylon has
been the common whore of all the priests, and each has accused the
other of keeping the strumpet; so well do they agree in their
explanations.
There now remain only a few books, which they call books of
the lesser prophets, and as I have already shown that the greater are
impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little
ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and
both be forgotten together.
I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a
wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and
the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick
them in the ground, but they will never make them grow. I pass on to
the books of the New Testament.
TURNING TO THE
NEW TESTAMENT
he New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophe-

T cies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its founda-
tion.
As it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child
before she was married, and that the son she might bring forth should
be executed, even unjustly, I see no reason for not believing that such
a woman as Mary, and such a man as Joseph, and Jesus existed; their
mere existence is a matter of indifference about which there is no
ground either to believe or to disbelieve, and which comes under the
common head of, It may be so; and what then?
The probability, however, is that there were such persons, or at
least such as resembled them in part of the circumstances, because
almost all romantic stories have been suggested by some actual cir-
cumstance; as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, not a word of
which is true, were suggested by the case of Alexander Selkirk.
It is not the existence, or non-existence, of the persons that I
trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New
Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon,
against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphe-
mously obscene.
It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married,
and while under this engagement she is, to speak plain language, de-
bauched by a ghost, under the impious pretense (Luke, chap. i., ver.
35), that “the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the
Highest shall overshadow thee.” Notwithstanding which, Joseph af-
terward marries her, cohabits with her as his wife, and in his turn ri-
vals the ghost. This is putting the story into intelligible language, and
Thomas Paine 118
when told in this manner, there is not a priest but must be ashamed to
own it.*
Obscenity in matters of faith, however wrapped up, is always a
token of fable and imposture; for it is necessary to our serious belief
in God that we do not connect it with stories that run, as this does,
into ludicrous interpretations. This story is upon the face of it, the
same kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda, or Jupiter and Europa,
or any of the amorous adventures of Jupiter; and shows, as is already
stated in the former part of “The Age of Reason,” that the Christian
faith is built upon the heathen mythology.
As the historical parts of the New Testament, so far as concerns
Jesus Christ, are confined to a very short space of time, less than two
years, and all within the same country, and nearly to the same spot,
the discordance of time, place, and circumstance, which detects the
fallacy of the books of the Old Testament, and proves them to be im-
positions, cannot be expected to be found here in the same abun-
dance. The New Testament compared with the Old, is like a farce of
one act, in which there is not room for very numerous violations of
the unities. There are, however, some glaring contradictions, which,
exclusive of the fallacy of the pretended prophecies, are sufficient to
show the story of Jesus Christ to be false.
I lay it down as a position which cannot be controverted, first,
that the agreement of all the parts of a story does not prove that story
to be true, because the parts may agree, and the whole may be false;
secondly, that the disagreement of the parts of a story proves the
whole cannot be true. The agreement does not prove true, but the dis-
agreement proves falsehood positively.
The history of Jesus Christ is contained in the four books as-
cribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The first chapter of Mat-
thew begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third
chapter of Luke, there is also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did
those two agree, it would not prove the genealogy to be true, because
it might, nevertheless, be a fabrication; but as they contradict each
other in every particular, it proves falsehood absolutely.
* Mary, the supposed virgin-mother of Jesus, had several other children,

sons and daughters. See Matthew, chap. xiii, verses 55, 56. – Author.
If Matthew speaks truth, Luke speaks falsehood, and if Luke

speaks truth, Matthew speaks falsehood; and as there is no authority
for believing one more than the other, there is no authority for believ-
ing either; and if they cannot be believed even in the very first thing
they say and set out to prove, they are not entitled to be believed in
anything they say afterward.
Truth is a uniform thing; and as to inspiration and revelation,
were we to admit it, it is impossible to suppose it can be contradic-
tory. Either, then, the men called apostles are impostors, or the books
ascribed to them have been written by other persons and fathered
upon them, as is the case with the Old Testament.
The book of Matthew gives (chap. i., ver 6) a genealogy by
name from David up through Joseph, the husband of Mary, to Christ;
and makes there to be twenty-eight generations. The book of Luke
gives also a genealogy by name from Christ, through Joseph, the
husband of Mary, down to David, and makes there to be forty-three
generations; besides which, there are only the two names of David
and Joseph that are alike in the two lists.
I here insert both genealogical lists, and for the sake of perspicu-
ity and comparison, have placed them both in the same direction, that
is from Joseph down to David.
Genealogy according to Matthew Genealogy according to Luke
Christ 23 Josaphat Christ 23 Neri
2 Joseph 24 Asa 2 Joseph 24 Melchi
3 Jacob 25 Abia 3 Heli 25 Addi
4 Matthan 26 Roboam 4 Matthat 26 Cosam
5 Eleazar 27 Solomon 5 Levi 27 Elmodam
6 Eliud 28 David5 6 Melchi 28 Er
7 Achim 7 Janna 29 Jose
8 Sadoc 8 Joseph 30 Eliezer
9 Azor 9 Mattathias 31 Jorim

Thomas Paine 120
10 Eliakim 10 Amos 32 Matthat
11 Abiud 11 Naum 33 Levi
12 Zorobabel 12 Esli 34 Simeon
13 Salathiel 13 Nagge 35 Juda
14 Jechonias 14 Maath 36 Joseph
15 Josias 15 Mattathias 37 Jonan
16 Amon 16 Semei 38 Eliakim
17 Manasses 17 Joseph 39 Melea
18 Ezekias 18 Juda 40 Menan
19 Achaz 19 Joanna 41 Mattatha
20 Joatham 20 Rhesa 42 Nathan
21 Ozias 21 Zorobabel 43 David
22 Joram 22 Salathiel
Now, if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out with a falsehood
between them (as these two accounts show they do) in the very com-
mencement of their history of Jesus Christ, and of whom and of what
he was, what authority (as I have before asked) is there left for be-
lieving the strange things they tell us afterward? If they cannot be be-
lieved in their account of his natural genealogy, how are we to
believe them when they tell us he was the Son of God begotten by a
ghost, and that an angel announced this in secret to his mother? If
they lied in one genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other?
If his natural genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is,
why are we not to suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufac-
tured also, and that the whole is fabulous? Can any man of serious re-
flection hazard his future happiness upon the belief of a story
naturally impossible, repugnant to every idea of decency, and related
by persons already detected of falsehood? Is it not more safe that we
stop ourselves at the plain, pure, and unmixed belief of one God,
which is Deism, than that we commit ourselves on an ocean of im-
probable, irrational, indecent and contradictory tales?
The first question, however, upon the books of the New Testa-
ment, as upon those of the Old, is: Are they genuine? Were they writ-
ten by the persons to whom they are ascribed? for it is upon this
ground only that the strange things related therein have been cred-
ited. Upon this point there is no direct proof for or against, and all
that this state of a case proves is doubtfulness, and doubtfulness is
the opposite of belief. The state, therefore, that the books are in,
proves against themselves as far as this kind of proof can go.
But exclusive of this, the presumption is that the books called
the Evangelists, and ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and that they are
impositions. The disordered state of the history in those four books,
the silence of one book upon matters related in the other, and the dis-
agreement that is to be found among them, implies that they are the
production of some unconnected individuals, many years after the
things they pretend to relate, each of whom made his own legend;
and not the writings of men living intimately together, as the men
called the apostles are supposed to have done – in fine, that they have
been manufactured, as the books of the Old Testament have been, by
other persons than those whose names they bear.
The story of the angel announcing what the church calls the im-
maculate conception is not so much as mentioned in the books as-
cribed to Mark and John; and is differently related in Matthew and
Luke. The former says the angel appeared to Joseph; the latter says it
was to Mary; but either Joseph or Mary was the worst evidence that
could have been thought of, for it was others that should have testi-
fied for them, and not they for themselves.
Were any girl that is now with child to say, and even to swear it,
that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her
so, would she be believed? Certainly she would not. Why, then, are
we to believe the same thing of another girl, whom we never saw,
told by nobody knows who, nor when, nor where? How strange and
inconsistent it is, that the same circumstance that would weaken the
belief even of a probable story, should be given as a motive for be-
lieving this one, that has upon the face of it every token of absolute
impossibility and imposture!
Thomas Paine 122
The story of Herod destroying all the children under two years
old, belongs altogether to the book of Matthew; not one of the rest
mentions anything about it. Had such a circumstance been true, the
universality of it must have made it known to all the writers, and the
thing would have been too striking to have been omitted by any.
This writer tells us, that Jesus escaped this slaughter because Jo-
seph and Mary were warned by an angel to flee with him unto Egypt;
but he forgot to make any provision for John, who was then under
two years of age. John, however, who stayed behind, fared as well as
Jesus, who fled; and, therefore, the story circumstantially belies
itself.
Not any two of these writers agree in reciting, exactly in the
same words, the written inscription, short as it is, which they tell us
was put over Christ when he was crucified; and besides this, Mark
says: He was crucified at the third hour (nine in the morning), and
John says it was the sixth hour (twelve at noon).*
The inscription is thus stated in these books:
MATTHEW….. This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.
MARK............. The King of the Jews.
LUKE.............. This is the King of the Jews.
JOHN.............. Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
We may infer from these circumstances, trivial as they are, that
those writers, whoever they were, and in whatever time they lived,
were not present at the scene. The only one of the men called apostles
who appears to have been near the spot was Peter, and when he was
accused of being one of Jesus’ followers, it is said, (Matthew, chap.
xxvi., ver. 74,) “Then he [Peter] began to curse and to swear, saying,
I know not the man!” yet we are now called upon to believe the same
Peter, convicted, by their own account, of perjury. For what reason,
or on what authority, shall we do this?
The accounts that are given of the circumstances that they tell us
attended the crucifixion are differently related in these four books.
* According to John, the sentence was not passed till about the sixth hour
(noon), and, consequently, the execution could not be till the afternoon;
but Mark says expressly, that he was crucified at the third hour (nine in
the morning), chap. xv, verse 25. John, chap. xix, verse 14. – Author.
The book ascribed to Matthew says, chap. xxvii, v. 45, “Now

from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the
ninth hour.” (Ver. 51, 52, 53), “And, behold, the veil of the temple
was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake,
and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of
the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his res-
urrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto many.”
Such is the account which this dashing writer of the book of Matthew
gives, but in which he is not supported by the writers of the other
books.
The writer of the book ascribed to Mark, in detailing the circum-
stances of the crucifixion, makes no mention of any earthquake, nor
of the rocks rending, nor of the graves opening, nor of the dead men
walking out. The writer of the book of Luke is silent also upon the
same points. And as to the writer of the book of John, though he de-
tails all the circumstances of the crucifixion down to the burial of
Christ, he says nothing about either the darkness – the veil of the
temple – the earthquake – the rocks – the graves – nor the dead men.
Now, if it had been true that those things had happened, and if
the writers of those books had lived at the time they did happen, and
had been the persons they are said to be, namely, the four men called
apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it was not possible for
them, as true historians, even without the aid of inspiration, not to
have recorded them.
The things, supposing them to have been facts, were of too
much notoriety not to have been known, and of too much importance
not to have been told. All these supposed apostles must have been
witnesses of the earthquake, if there had been any; for it was not pos-
sible for them to have been absent from it; the opening of the graves
and the resurrection of the dead men, and their walking about the
city, is of greater importance than the earthquake.
An earthquake is always possible and natural, and proves noth-
ing but this opening of the graves is supernatural, and directly in
point to their doctrine, their cause, and their apostleship. Had it been
true, it would have filled up whole chapters of those books, and been
the chosen theme and general chorus of all the writers; but instead of
this, little and trivial things, and mere prattling conversations of, he
Thomas Paine 124
said this, and he said that, are often tediously detailed, while this,
most important of all, had it been true, is passed off in a slovenly
manner by a single dash of the pen, and that by one writer only, and
not so much as hinted at by the rest.
It is an easy thing to tell a lie, but it is difficult to support the lie
after it is told. The writer of the book of Matthew should have told us
who the saints were that came to life again, and went into the city,
and what became of them afterward, and who it was that saw them –
for he is not hardy enough to say he saw them himself; whether they
came out naked, and all in natural buff, he-saints and she-saints; or
whether they came full dressed, and where they got their dresses;
whether they went to their former habitations, and reclaimed their
wives, their husbands, and their property, and how they were re-
ceived; whether they entered ejectments for the recovery of their
possessions, or brought actions of crim. con. against the rival inter-
lopers; whether they remained on earth, and followed their former
occupation of preaching or working; or whether they died again, or
went back to their graves alive, and buried themselves.
Strange, indeed, that an army of saints should return to life, and
nobody know who they were, nor who it was that saw them, and that
not a word more should be said upon the subject, nor these saints
have anything to tell us!
Had it been the prophets who (as we are told) had formerly
prophesied of these things, they must have had a great deal to say.
They could have told us everything and we should have had posthu-
mous prophecies, with notes and commentaries upon the first, a little
better at least than we have now. Had it been Moses and Aaron and
Joshua and Samuel and David, not an unconverted Jew had remained
in all Jerusalem. Had it been John the Baptist, and the saints of the
time then present, everybody would have known them, and they
would have out-preached and out-famed all the other apostles. But,
instead of this, these saints were made to pop up, like Jonah’s gourd
in the night, for no purpose at all but to wither in the morning. Thus
much for this part of the story.
The tale of the resurrection follows that of the crucifixion, and
in this as well as in that, the writers, whoever they were, disagree so
much as to make it evident that none of them were there.
The book of Matthew states that when Christ was put in the sep-
ulchre, the Jews applied to Pilate for a watch or a guard to be placed
over the sepulchre, to prevent the body being stolen by the disciples;
and that, in consequence of this request, the sepulchre was made
sure, sealing the stone that covered the mouth, and setting a watch.
But the other books say nothing about this application, nor
about the sealing, nor the guard, nor the watch; and according to their
accounts, there were none. Matthew, however, follows up this part of
the story of the guard or the watch with a second part, that I shall no-
tice in the conclusion, as it serves to detect the fallacy of these books.
The book of Matthew continues its account, and says (chap.
xxviii., ver. 1) that at the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, to-
ward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other
Mary, to see the sepulchre. Mark says it was sun-rising, and John
says it was dark. Luke says it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and
Mary, the mother of James, and other women, that came to the sepul-
chre; and John states that Mary Magdalene came alone. So well do
they agree about their first evidence! they all, however, appear to
have known most about Mary Magdalene; she was a woman of a
large acquaintance, and it was not an ill conjecture that she might be
upon the stroll.
The book of Matthew goes on to say (ver. 2), “And behold there
was a great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from
heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat
upon it.” But the other books say nothing about any earthquake, nor
about the angel rolling back the stone and sitting upon it, and accord-
ing to their account, there was no angel sitting there. Mark says the
angel was within the sepulchre, sitting on the right side. Luke says
there were two, and they were both standing up; and John says they
were both sitting down, one at the head and the other at the feet.
Matthew says that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on
the outside of the sepulchre told the two Marys that Christ was risen,
and that the women went away quickly. Mark says that the women,
upon seeing the stone rolled away, and wondering at it, went into the
sepulchre, and that it was the angel that was sitting within on the
right side, that told them so. Luke says it was the two angels that
were standing up; and John says it was Jesus Christ himself that told
Thomas Paine 126
it to Mary Magdalene, and that she did not go into the sepulchre, but
only stooped down and looked in.
Now, if the writers of those four books had gone into a court of
justice to prove an alibi (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here
attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by super-
natural means), and had they given their evidence in the same contra-
dictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of
having their ears cropped for perjury, and would have justly de-
served it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books that have
been imposed upon the world, as being given by divine inspiration,
and as the unchangeable Word of God.
The writer of the book of Matthew, after giving this account re-
lates a story that is not to be found in any of the other books, and
which is the same I have just before alluded to.
“Now,” says he (that is, after the conversation the women had
with the angel sitting upon the stone), “behold some of the watch
[meaning the watch that he had said had been placed over the sepul-
chre] came into the city, showed unto the chief priests all the things
that were done; and when they were assembled with the elders and
had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying,
Say ye His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we
slept; and if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him,
and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught;
and this saying [that his disciples stole him away] is commonly re-
ported among the Jews until this day.”
The expression, until this day, is an evidence that the book as-
cribed to Matthew was not written by Matthew, and that it had been
manufactured long after the time and things of which it pretends to
treat; for the expression implies a great length of intervening time. It
would be inconsistent in us to speak in this manner of anything hap-
pening in our own time. To give therefore, intelligible meaning to the
expression, we must suppose a lapse of some generations at least, for
this manner of speaking carries the mind back to ancient time.
The absurdity also of the story is worth noticing; for it shows the
writer of the book of Matthew to have been an exceedingly weak and
foolish man. He tells a story that contradicts itself in point of possi-
bility; for through the guard, if there were any, might be made to say
that the body was taken away while they were asleep, and to give that
as a reason for their not having prevented it, that same sleep must
also have prevented their knowing how and by whom it was done,
and yet they are made to say, that it was the disciples who did it.
Were a man to tender his evidence of something that he should
say was done, and of the manner of doing it, and of the person who
did it, while he was asleep, and could know nothing of the matter,
such evidence could not be received; it will do well enough for Tes-
tament evidence, but not for anything where truth is concerned.
I come now to that part of the evidence in those books, that re-
spects the pretended appearance of Christ after this pretended resur-
rection.
The writer of the book of Matthew relates, that the angel that
was sitting on the stone at the mouth of the sepulchre, said to the two
Marys, (chap. xxviii., ver. 7), “Behold Christ has gone before you
into Galilee, there shall ye see him; lo, I have told you.” And the
same writer at the next two verses (8, 9), makes Christ himself to
speak to the same purpose to these women immediately after the an-
gel had told it to them, and that they ran quickly to tell it to the disci-
ples; and at the 16th verse it is said, “Then the eleven disciples went
away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them;
and when they saw him, they worshiped him.”
But the writer of the book of John tells us a story very different
to this; for he says, chap. xx., ver. 19, “Then the same day at evening,
being the first day of the week [that is, the same day that Christ is said
to have risen,] when the doors were shut where the disciples were as-
sembled, for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst of
them.”
According to Matthew the eleven were marching to Galilee to
meet Jesus in a mountain, by his own appointment, at the very time
when, according to John, they were assembled in another place, and
that not by appointment, but in secret, for fear of the Jews.
The writer of the book of Luke contradicts that of Matthew more
pointedly than John does; for he says expressly that the meeting was
in Jerusalem the evening of the same day that he [Christ] rose, and
that the eleven were there. See Luke, chap. xxiv, ver. 13, 33.
Thomas Paine 128
Now, it is not possible, unless we admit these supposed disciples

the right of willful lying, that the writer of those books could be any
of the eleven persons called disciples; for if, according to Matthew,
the eleven went into Galilee to meet Jesus in a mountain by his own
appointment on the same day that he is said to have risen, Luke and
John must have been two of that eleven; yet the writer of Luke says
expressly, and John implies as much, that the meeting was that same
day, in a house in Jerusalem; and, on the other hand, if, according to
Luke and John, the eleven were assembled in a house in Jerusalem,
Matthew must have been one of that eleven; yet Matthew says the
meeting was in a mountain in Galilee, and consequently the evidence
given in those books destroys each other.
The writer of the book of Mark says nothing about any meeting
in Galilee; but he says, (chap. xvi, ver. 12), that Christ, after his res-
urrection, appeared in another form to two of them as they walked
into the country, and that these two told it to the residue, who would
not believe them.
Luke also tells a story in which he keeps Christ employed the
whole day of this pretended resurrection, until the evening, and
which totally invalidates the account of going to the mountain in
Galilee. He says that two of them, without saying which two, went
that same day to a village call Emmaus, three score furlongs (seven
miles and a half) from Jerusalem, and that Christ, in disguise, went
with them, and stayed with them unto the evening, and supped with
them, and then vanished out of their sight, and re-appeared that same
evening at the meeting of the eleven in Jerusalem.
This is the contradictory manner in which the evidence of this
pretended re-appearance of Christ is stated; the only point in which
the writers agree, is the skulking privacy of that re-appearance; for
whether it was in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or a shut-up
house in Jerusalem, it was still skulking. To what cause, then, are we
to assign this skulking? On the one hand it is directly repugnant to
the supposed or pretended end – that of convincing the world that
Christ had risen; and on the other hand, to have asserted the publicity
of it would have exposed the writers of those books to public detec-
tion, and, therefore, they have been under the necessity of making it a
private affair.
As to the account of Christ being seen by more than five hun-

dred at once, it is Paul only who says it, and not the five hundred who
say it for themselves. It is, therefore, the testimony of but one man,
and that, too, of a man who did not, according to the same account,
believe a word of the matter himself at the time it is said to have
happened.
His evidence, supposing him to have been the writer of the 15th
chapter of Corinthians, where this account is given, is like that of a
man who comes into a court of justice to swear that what he had
sworn before is false. A man may often see reason, and he has, too,
always the right of changing his opinion; but this liberty does not ex-
tend to matters of fact.
I now come to the last scene, that of the ascension into heaven.
Here all fear of the Jews, and of everything else, must necessarily
have been out of the question: it was that which, if true, was to seal
the whole, and upon which the reality of the future mission of the dis-
ciples was to rest for proof.
Words, whether declarations or promises, that passed in private,
either in the recess of a mountain in Galilee or in a shut-up house in
Jerusalem, even supposing them to have been spoken, could not be
evidence in public; it was therefore necessary that this last scene
should preclude the possibility of denial and dispute, and that it
should be, as I have stated in the former part of “The Age of Reason,”
as public and as visible as the sun at noonday; at least it ought to have
been as public as the crucifixion is reported to have been. But to
come to the point.
In the first place, the writer of the book of Matthew does not say
a syllable about it; neither does the writer of the book of John. This
being the case, it is not possible to suppose that those writers, who ef-
fect to be even minute in other matters, would have been silent upon
this, had it been true?
The writer of the book of Mark passes it off in a careless, slov-
enly manner, with a single dash of the pen, as if he was tired of ro-
mancing or ashamed of the story. So also does the writer of Luke.
And even between these two, there is not an apparent agreement as to
the place where his final parting is said to have been.
Thomas Paine 130
The book of Mark says that Christ appeared to the eleven as they
sat at meat, alluding to the meeting of the eleven at Jerusalem; he
then states the conversation that he says passed at that meeting; and
immediately after says (as a school-boy would finish a dull story)
“So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up
into heaven and sat on the right hand of God.”
But the writer of Luke says, that the ascension was from
Bethany; that he [Christ] led them out as far as Bethany, and was
parted from them, and was carried up into heaven. So also was Ma-
homet; and as to Moses, the apostle Jude says, (ver. 9) “that Michael
and the devil disputed about his body.” While we believe such fables
as these, or either of them, we believe unworthily of the Almighty.
I have now gone through the examination of the four books as-
cribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; and when it is considered
that the whole space of time from the crucifixion to what is called the
ascension is but a few days, apparently not more than three or four,
and that all the circumstances are said to have happened nearly about
the same spot, Jerusalem, it is, I believe, impossible to find in any
story upon record so many and such glaring absurdities, contradic-
tions and falsehoods as are in those books. They are more numerous
and striking than I had any expectation of finding when I began this
examination, and far more so than I had any idea of when I wrote the
former part of “The Age of Reason.”
I had then neither Bible nor Testament to refer to, nor could I
procure any. My own situation, even as to existence, was becoming
every day more precarious, and as I was willing to leave something
behind me on the subject, I was obliged to be quick and concise.
The quotations I then made were from memory only, but they
are correct; and the opinions I have advanced in that work are the ef-
fect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible
and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of
man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dy-
ing to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange
means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and
power of the Almighty; that the only true religion is Deism, by which
I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God, and an imitation
of His moral character, or the practice of what are called moral vir-
tues – and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned)
that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now – and
so help me God.
But to return to the subject. Though it is impossible, at this dis-
tance of time, to ascertain as a fact who were the writers of those four
books (and this alone is sufficient to hold them in doubt, and where
we doubt we do not believe), it is not difficult to ascertain negatively
that they were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed.
The contradictions in those books demonstrate two things:
First, that the writers could not have been eye-witnesses and
ear-witnesses of the matters they relate, or they would have related
them without those contradictions; and consequently, that the books
have not been written by the persons called apostles, who are sup-
posed to have been witnesses of this kind.
Secondly, that the writers, whoever they were, have not acted in
concerted imposition; but each writer separately and individually for
himself, and without the knowledge of the other.
The same evidence that applies to prove the one, applies equally
to prove both cases; that is, that the books were not written by the
men called apostles, and also that they are not a concerted imposi-
tion. As to inspiration, it is altogether out of the question; we may as
well attempt to unite truth and falsehood, as inspiration and
contradiction.
If four men are eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses to a scene, they
will, without any concert between them, agree as to time and place
when and where that scene happened. Their individual knowledge of
the thing, each one knowing it for himself, renders concert totally
unnecessary; the one will not say it was in a mountain in the country,
and the other at a house in town: the one will not say it was at sunrise,
and the other that it was dark. For in whatever place it was, at what-
ever time it was, they know it equally alike.
And, on the other hand, if four men concert a story, they will
make their separate relations of that story agree and corroborate with
each other to support the whole. That concert supplies the want of
fact in the one case, as the knowledge of the fact supersedes, in the
other case, the necessity of a concert.
Thomas Paine 132
The same contradictions, therefore, that prove that there has

been no concert, prove also that the reporters had no knowledge of
the fact (or rather of that which they relate as a fact), and detect also
the falsehood of their reports. These books, therefore, have neither
been written by the men called apostles, nor by impostors in concert.
How then have they been written?
I am not one of those who are fond of believing there is much of
that which is called willful lying, or lying originally, except in the
case of men setting up to be prophets, as in the Old Testament; for
prophesying is lying professionally. In almost all other cases, it is not
difficult to discover the progress by which even simple supposition,
with the aid of credulity, will, in time, grow into a lie, and at last be
told as a fact; and whenever we can find a charitable reason for a
thing of this kind, we ought not to indulge a severe one.
The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story
of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vi-
sion, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the
assassination of Julius Caesar, not many years before; and they gen-
erally have their origin in violent deaths, or in the execution of
innocent persons.
In cases of this kind, compassion lends its aid and benevolently
stretches the story. It goes on a little and a little further till it becomes
a most certain truth. Once start a ghost and credulity fills up the his-
tory of its life, and assigns the cause of its appearance! One tells it
one way, another another way, till there are as many stories about the
ghost and about the proprietor of the ghost, as there are about Jesus
Christ in these four books.
The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that
strange mixture of the natural and impossible that distinguishes leg-
endary tale from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in and
going out when the doors were shut, and of vanishing out of sight and
appearing again, as one would conceive of an unsubstantial vision;
then again he is hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his supper. But as
those who tell stories of this kind never provide for all the cases, so it
is here; they have told us that when he arose he left his grave clothes
behind him; but they have forgotten to provide other clothes for him
to appear in afterward, or to tell us what he did with them when he as-

cended – whether he stripped all off, or went up clothes and all.
In the case of Elijah, they have been careful enough to make him
throw down his mantle; how it happened not to be burned in the char-
iot of fire they also have not told us. But as imagination supplies all
deficiencies of this kind, we may suppose, if we please, that it was
made of salamander’s wool.
Those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical history
may suppose that the book called the New Testament has existed
ever since the time of Jesus Christ, as they suppose that the books as-
cribed to Moses have existed ever since the time of Moses. But the
fact is historically otherwise. There was no such book as the New
Testament till more than three hundred years after the time that
Christ is said to have lived.
At what time the books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John began to appear is altogether a matter of uncertainty. There is
not the least shadow of evidence of who the persons were that wrote
them, nor at what time they were written; and they might as well
have been called by the names of any of the other supposed apostles,
as by the names they are now called. The originals are not in the pos-
session of any Christian Church existing, any more than the two ta-
bles of stone written on, they pretend, by the finger of God, upon
Mount Sinai, and given to Moses, are in the possession of the Jews.
And even if they were, there is no possibility of proving the hand-
writing in either case.
At the time those books were written there was no printing, and
consequently there could be no publication, otherwise than by writ-
ten copies, which any man might make or alter at pleasure, and call
them originals.6 Can we suppose it is consistent with the wisdom of
the Almighty, to commit Himself and His will to man upon such pre-
carious means as these, or that it is consistent we should pin our faith
upon such uncertainties? We cannot make, nor alter, nor even imitate
so much as one blade of grass that He has made, and yet we can make
or alter words of God as easily as words of man.
About three hundred and fifty years after the time that Christ is
said to have lived, several writings of the kind I am speaking of were
scattered in the hands of divers individuals; and as the church had be-
Thomas Paine 134
gan to form itself into a hierarchy, or church government, with tem-

poral powers, it set itself about collecting them into a code, as we
now see them, called The New Testament. They decided by vote, as I
have before said in the former part of “The Age of Reason,” which of
those writings, out of the collection they had made, should be the
Word of God, and which should not. The rabbins of the Jews had de-
cided, by vote, upon the books of the Bible before.
As the object of the church, as is the case in all national estab-
lishments of churches, was power and revenue, and terror the means
it used, it is consistent to suppose that the most miraculous and won-
derful of the writings they had collected stood the best chance of be-
ing voted. And as to the authenticity of the books, the vote stands in
the place of it, for it can be traced no higher.
Disputes, however, ran high among the people then calling
themselves Christians; not only as to points of doctrine, but as to the
authenticity of the books. In the contest between the persons called
St. Augustine and Fauste, about the year 400, the latter says: “The
books called the Evangelists have been composed long after the
times of the apostles by some obscure men, who, fearing that the
world would not give credit to their relation of matters of which they
could not be informed, have published them under the names of the
apostles, and which are so full of sottishness and discordant rela-
tions, that there is neither agreement nor connection between them.”
And in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of
those books, as being the Word of God, he says, “It is thus that your
predecessors have inserted in the scriptures of our Lord many things,
which, though they carry his name agrees not with his doctrine. This
is not surprising, since that we have often proved that these things
have not been written by himself, nor by his apostles, but that for the
greater part they are founded upon tales, upon vague reports, and put
together by I know not what, half-Jews, but with little agreement be-
tween them, and which they have nevertheless published under the
names of the apostles of our Lord, and have thus attributed to them
their own errors and their lies”*
The reader will see by these extracts, that the authenticity of the
books of the New Testament was denied, and the books treated as
* I have these two extracts from Boulanger’s Life of Paul, written in

French. Boulanger has quoted them from the writings of Augustine
against Fauste, to which he refers. – Author.
tales, forgeries, and lies, at the time they were voted to be the Word
of God.7 But the interest of the church, with the assistance of the
fagot, bore down the opposition, and at last suppressed all investiga-
tion.
Miracles followed upon miracles, if we will believe them, and
men were taught to say they believed whether they believed or not.
But (by way of throwing in a thought) the French Revolution has ex-
communicated the church from the power of working miracles; she
has not been able, with the assistance of all her saints, to work one
miracle since the revolution began; and as she never stood in greater
need than now, we may, without the aid of divination, conclude that
all her former miracles were tricks and lies.
When we consider the lapse of more than three hundred years
intervening between the time that Christ is said to have lived and the
time the New Testament was formed into a book, we must see, even
without the assistance of historical evidence, the exceeding uncer-
tainty there is of its authenticity. The authenticity of the book of
Homer, so far as regards the authorship, is much better established
than that of the New Testament, though Homer is a thousand years
the most ancient.
It is only an exceedingly good poet that could have written the
book of Homer, and therefore few men only could have attempted it;
and a man capable of doing it would not have thrown away his own
fame by giving it to another. In like manner, there were but few that
could have composed Euclid’s “Elements,” because none but an ex-
ceedingly good geometrician could have been the author of that
work.
But with respect to the books of the New Testament, particularly
such parts as tell us of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, any
person who could tell a story of an apparition, or of a man’s walking
could have made such books; for the story is most wretchedly told.
The chance, therefore, of forgery in the Testament, is millions to one
greater than in the case of Homer or Euclid.
Of the numerous priests or parsons of the present day, bishops
and all, every one of them can make a sermon, or translate a scrap of
Latin, especially if it had been translated a thousand times before;
but is there any among them that can write poetry like Homer, or sci-
Thomas Paine 136
ence like Euclid? The sum total of a person’s learning, with very few
exceptions, is a b ab, and hic haec, hoc; and their knowledge of sci-
ence is three times one is one; and this is more than sufficient to have
enabled them, had they lived at the time, to have written all the books
of the New Testament.
As the opportunities of forgeries were greater, so also was the
inducement. A man could gain no advantage by writing under the
name of Homer or Euclid; if he could write equal to them, it would be
better that he wrote under his own name; if inferior, he could not suc-
ceed. Pride would prevent the former, and impossibility the latter.
But with respect to such books as compose the New Testament, all
the inducements were on the side of forgery. The best imagined his-
tory that could have been made, at the distance of two or three hun-
dred years after the time, could not have passed for an original under
the name of the real writer; the only chance of success lay in forgery,
for the church wanted pretense for its new doctrine, and truth and
talents were out of the question.
But as is not uncommon (as before observed) to relate stories of
persons walking after they are dead, and of ghosts and apparitions of
such as have fallen by some violent or extraordinary means; and as
the people of that day were in the habit of believing such things, and
of the appearance of angels, and also of devils, and of their getting
into people’s insides and shaking them like a fit of an ague, and of
their being cast out again as if by an emetic – (Mary Magdalene, the
book of Mark tells us, has brought up, or been brought to bed of
seven devils) – it was nothing extraordinary that some story of this
kind should get abroad of the person called Jesus Christ, and become
afterward the foundation of the four books ascribed to Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John.
Each writer told the tale as he heard it, or thereabouts, and gave
to his book the name of the saint or the apostle whom tradition had
given as the eye-witness. It is only upon this ground that the contra-
diction in those books can be accounted for; and if this be not the
case, they are downright impositions, lies and forgeries, without
even the apology of credulity.
That they have been written by a sort of half Jews, as the forego-
ing quotations mention, is discernable enough. The frequent refer-
ences made to that chief assassin and impostor, Moses, and to the
men called prophets, establish this point; and, on the other hand, the
church has complemented the fraud by admitting the Bible and the
Testament to reply to each other.
Between the Christian Jew and the Christian Gentile, the thing
called a prophecy and the thing prophesied, the type and the thing
typified, the sign and the thing signified, have been industriously
rummaged up and fitted together like old locks and pick-lock keys.
The story foolishly enough told of Eve and the serpent, and nat-
urally enough as to the enmity between men and serpents (for the
serpent always bites about the heel, because it cannot reach higher;
and the man always knocks the serpent about the head, as the most
effectual way to prevent its biting),* this foolish story, I say, has been
made into a prophecy, a type, and a promise to begin with; and the ly-
ing imposition of Isaiah to Ahaz, That a virgin shall conceive and
bear a son, as a sign that Ahaz should conquer, when the event was
that he was defeated (as already noticed in the observations on the
book of Isaiah), has been perverted and made to serve as a
winder-up.
Jonah and the whale are also made into a sign or a type. Jonah is
Jesus, and the whale is the grave; for it is said (and they have made
Christ to say it of himself), Matt. chap. xii, ver. 40, “For as Jonah was
three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of
Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
But it happens, awkwardly enough, that Christ, according to
their own account, was but one day and two nights in the grave;
about 36 hours, instead of 72; that is, the Friday night, the Saturday,
and the Saturday night; for they say he was up on the Sunday morn-
ing by sunrise, or before. But as this fits quite as well as the bite and
the kick in Genesis, or the virgin and her son in Isaiah, it will pass in
the lump of orthodox things. Thus much for the historical part of the
Testament and its evidences.
Epistles of Paul. – The epistles ascribed to Paul, being fourteen
in number, almost fill up the remaining part of the Testament.
* It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel. Genesis, chap. iii,
verse 15. – Author.
Thomas Paine 138
Whether those epistles were written by the person to whom they are
ascribed is a matter of no great importance, since the writer, whoever
he was, attempts to prove his doctrine by argument. He does not pre-
tend to have been witness to any of the scenes told of the resurrection
and the ascension, and he declares that he had not believed them.
The story of his being struck to the ground as he was journeying
to Damascus has nothing in it miraculous or extraordinary; he es-
caped with life, and that is more than many others have done, who
have been struck with lightning; and that he should lose his sight for
three days, and be unable to eat or drink during that time, is
nothingmore than is common in such conditions. His companions
that were with him appear not to have suffered in the same manner,
for they were well enough to lead him the remainder of the journey;
neither did they pretend to have seen any vision.
The character of the person called Paul, according to the ac-
counts given of him, has in it a great deal of violence and fanaticism;
he had persecuted with as much heat as he preached afterward; the
stroke he had received had changed his thinking, without altering his
constitution; and either as a Jew or a Christian, he was the same
zealot. Such men are never good moral evidences of any doctrine
they preach. They are always in extremes, as well of actions as of
belief.
The doctrine he sets out to prove by argument is the resurrection
of the same body, and he advances this as an evidence of immortality.
But so much will men differ in their manner of thinking, and in the
conclusions they draw from the same premises, that this doctrine of
the resurrection of the same body, so far from being an evidence of
immortality, appears to me to furnish an evidence against it; for if I
have already died in this body, and am raised again in the same body
in which I have lived, it is a presumptive evidence that I shall die
again.
That resurrection no more secures me against the repetition of
dying, than an ague-fit, when passed, secures me against another. To
believe, therefore, in immortality, I must have a more elevated idea
than is contained in the gloomy doctrine of the resurrection.
Besides, as a matter of choice, as well as of hope, I had rather
have a better body and a more convenient form than the present. Ev-
ery animal in the creation excels us in something. The winged in-

sects, without mentioning doves or eagles, can pass over more space
and with greater ease in a few minutes than man can in an hour. The
glide of the smallest fish, in proportion to its bulk, exceeds us in mo-
tion almost beyond comparison, and without weariness.
Even the sluggish snail can ascend from the bottom of a dun-
geon, where a man, by the want of that ability, would perish; and a
spider can launch itself from the top, as a playful amusement. The
personal powers of man are so limited, and his heavy frame so little
constructed to extensive enjoyment, that there is nothing to induce us
to wish the opinion of Paul to be true. It is too little for the magnitude
of the scene – too mean for the sublimity of the subject.
But all other arguments apart, the consciousness of existence is
the only conceivable idea we can have of another life, and the contin-
uance of that consciousness is immortality. The consciousness of ex-
istence, or the knowing that we exist, is not necessarily confined to
the same form, nor to the same matter, even in this life.
We have not in all cases the same form, nor in any case the same
matter that composed our bodies twenty or thirty years ago; and yet
we are conscious of being the same persons. Even legs and arms,
which make up almost half the human frame, are not necessary to the
consciousness of existence. These may be lost or taken away, and the
full consciousness of existence remain; and were their place supplied
by wings, or other appendages, we cannot conceive that it would al-
ter our consciousness of existence.
In short, we know not how much, or rather how little, of our
composition it is, and how exquisitely fine that little is, that creates in
us this consciousness of existence; and all beyond that is like the
pulp of a peach, distinct and separate from the vegetative speck in the
kernel.
Who can say by what exceedingly fine action of fine matter it is
that a thought is produced in what we call the mind? And yet that
thought when produced, as I now produce the thought I am writing,
is capable of becoming immortal, and is the only production of man
that has that capacity.
Thomas Paine 140
Statues of marble or brass will perish; and statues made in imita-

tion of them are not the same statues, nor the same workmanship, any
more than the copy of a picture is the same picture. But print and re-
print a thought a thousand times over, and that with materials of any
kind – carve it in wood or engrave it on stone, the thought is eternally
and identically the same thought in every case. It has a capacity of
unimpaired existence, unaffected by change of matter, and is essen-
tially distinct and of a nature different from everything else that we
know or can conceive.
If, then, the thing produced has in itself a capacity of being im-
mortal, it is more than a token that the power that produced it, which
is the self-same thing as consciousness of existence, can be immortal
also; and that as independently of the matter it was first connected
with, as the thought is of the printing or writing it first appeared in.
The one idea is not more difficult to believe than the other, and we
can see that one is true.
That the consciousness of existence is not dependent on the
same form or the same matter is demonstrated to our senses in the
works of the creation, as far as our senses are capable of receiving
that demonstration. A very numerous part of the animal creation
preaches to us, far better that Paul, the belief of a life hereafter. Their
little life resembles an earth and a heaven – a present and a future
state, and comprises, if it may be so expressed, immortality in minia-
ture.
The most beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the
winged insects, and they are not so originally. They acquire that form
and that inimitable brilliancy by progressive changes. The slow and
creeping caterpillar -worm of to-day passes in a few days to a torpid
figure and a state resembling death; and in the next change comes
forth in all the miniature magnificence of life, a splendid butterfly.
No resemblance of the former creature remains; everything is
changed; all his powers are new, and life is to him another thing. We
cannot conceive that the consciousness of existence is not the same
in this state of the animal as before; why then must I believe that the
resurrection of the same body is necessary to continue to me the con-
sciousness of existence hereafter?
In the former part of “The Age of Reason” I have called the cre-
ation the only true and real Word of God; and this instance, or this
text, in the book of creation, not only shows to us that this thing may
be so, but that it is so; and that the belief of a future state is a rational
belief, founded upon facts visible in the creation; for it is not more
difficult to believe that we shall exist hereafter in a better state and
form than at present, than that a worm should become a butterfly, and
quit the dunghill for the atmosphere, if we did not know it as a fact.
As to the doubtful jargon ascribed to Paul in the 15th chapter of
I. Corinthians, which makes part of the burial service of some Chris-
tian sectaries, it is as destitute of meaning as the tolling of a bell at a
funeral; it explains nothing to the understanding – it illustrates noth-
ing to the imagination, but leaves the reader to find any meaning if he
can. “All flesh [says he] is not the same flesh. There is one flesh of
men; another of beast; another of fishes; and another of birds.” And
what then? – nothing. A cook could have said as much.
“There are also [says he] bodies celestial, and bodies terrestrial;
the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is an-
other.” And what then? – nothing. And what is the difference? noth-
ing that he has told. “There is [says he] one glory of the sun, and
another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars.” And what
then? – nothing; except that he says that one star differeth from an-
other star in glory, instead of distance; and he might as well have
told us that the moon did not shine so bright as the sun.
All this is nothing better than the jargon of a conjuror, who picks
up phrases he does not understand, to confound the credulous people
who have come to have their fortunes told. Priests and conjurors are
of the same trade.
Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist and to prove his system
of resurrection from the principles of vegetation. “Thou fool, [says
he], that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.” To which
one might reply in his own language and say, “Thou fool, Paul, that
which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die not; for the grain
that dies in the ground never does, and cannot vegetate. It is only the
living grains that produce the next crop.” But the metaphor, in any
point of view, is no simile. It is succession, and not resurrection.
Thomas Paine 142
The progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as

from a worm to a butterfly, applies to the case; but this of a grain does
not, and shows Paul to have been what he says of others, a fool.
Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by
him or not, is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative
or dogmatical; and as the argument is defective and the dogmatical
part is merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them.
And the same may be said for the remaining parts of the Testa-
ment. It is not upon the epistles, but upon what is called the Gospel,
contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John, and upon the pretended prophecies, that the theory of the
church calling itself the Christian Church is founded. The epistles
are dependent upon those, and must follow their fate; for if the story
of Jesus Christ be fabulous, all reasoning founded upon it as a sup-
posed truth must fall with it.
We know from history that one of the principal leaders of this
Church, Athanasius, lived at the time the New Testament was
formed;* and we know also, from the absurd jargon he left us under
the name of a creed, the character of the men who formed the New
Testament; and we know also from the same history that the authen-
ticity of the books of which it is composed was denied at the time. It
was upon the vote of such men as Athanasius, that the Testament was
decreed to be the Word of God; and nothing can present to us a more
strange idea than that of decreeing the word of God by vote.
Those who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the
place of God, and have no foundation for future happiness; credulity,
however, is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting convic-
tion. It is strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it
makes to ascertain truth. We should never force belief upon our-
selves in anything.
I here close the subject of the Old Testament and the New. The
evidence I have produced to prove them forgeries is extracted from
the books themselves, and acts, like a two-edged sword, either way.
If the evidence be denied, the authenticity of the scriptures is denied
* Athanasius died, according to the Church chronology, in the year 371.

– Author.
with it; for it is scripture evidence; and if the evidence be admitted,

the authenticity of the books is disproved. The contradictory impos-
sibilities contained in the Old Testament and the New, put them in
the case of a man who swears for and against. Either evidence con-
victs him of perjury, and equally destroys reputation.
Should the Bible and the New Testament hereafter fall, it is not I
that have done it. I have done no more than extracted the evidence
from the confused mass of matter with which it is mixed, and ar-
ranged that evidence in a point of light to be clearly seen and easily
comprehended; and, having done this, I leave the reader to judge for
himself, as I have judged for myself.
CONCLUSION
n the former part of “The Age of Reason” I have spoken of the
I three frauds, mystery, miracle, and prophecy; and as I have
seen nothing in any of the answers to that work that in the least af-
fects what I have there said upon those subjects, I shall not encumber
this Second Part with additions that are not necessary.
I have spoken also in the same work upon what is called revela-
tion, and have shown the absurd misapplication of that term to the
books of the Old Testament and the New; for certainly revelation is
out of the question in reciting anything of which man has been the
actor or the witness.
That which a man has done or seen, needs no revelation to tell
him he had done it or seen it, for he knows it already; nor to enable
him to tell it or to write it. It is ignorance or imposition to apply the
term revelation in such cases: yet the Bible and Testament are
classed under this fraudulent description of being all revelation.
Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and
man, can only be applied to something which God reveals of His will
to man; but though the power of the Almighty to make such a com-
munication is necessarily admitted, because to that power all things
are possible, yet the thing so revealed (if anything ever was revealed,
and which, by the bye, it is impossible to prove), is revelation to the
person only to whom it is made.
His account of it to another person is not revelation; and who-
ever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the ac-
count comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have
dreamed it, or he may be an impostor and may lie.
There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of
what he tells, for even the morality of it would be no proof of revela-
tion. In all such cases the proper answer would be, “When it is re-
vealed to me, I will believe it to be a revelation; but it is not, and
cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation before;

neither is it proper that I should take the word of a man as the word of
God, and put man in the place of God.”
This is the manner in which I have spoken of revelation in the
former part of “The Age of Reason”; and which, while it reveren-
tially admits revelation as a possible thing, because, as before said, to
the Almighty all things are possible, it prevents the imposition of one
man upon another, and precludes the wicked use of pretended revela-
tion.
But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of
revelation, I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communi-
cate anything to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by
any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses
are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of
Himself in the works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel
in ourselves to bad actions, and the disposition to do good ones.
The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and
the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had
their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has
been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the Divin-
ity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of
man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist.
It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a
thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine
of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such im-
postor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible proph-
ets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have
credit among us.
Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of
men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled, and the
bloody persecutions and tortures unto death, and religious wars, that
since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes – whence rose
they but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this
monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the Bible
have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament of the
other.
Thomas Paine 146
Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established

by the sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was im-
possible that twelve men could begin with the sword; they had not
the power; but no sooner were the professors of Christianity suffi-
ciently powerful to employ the sword, than they did so, and the stake
and fagot, too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same
spirit that Peter cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant (if the story
be true), he would have cut off his head, and the head of his master,
had he been able.
Besides this, Christianity founds itself originally upon the Bi-
ble, and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that
in the worst use of it – not to terrify, but to extirpate. The Jews made
no converts; they butchered all. The Bible is the sire of the Testa-
ment, and both are called the Word of God. The Christians read both
books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called
Christianity is made up of both. It is then false to say that Christianity
was not established by the sword.
The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the
only reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than
Christians. They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they
call the scriptures a dead letter. Had they called them by a worse
name, they had been nearer the truth.
It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of
the Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial mis-
eries, and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among
mankind, to expel all ideas of revealed religion, as a dangerous her-
esy and an impious fraud.
What is that we have learned from this pretended thing called re-
vealed religion? Nothing that is useful to man, and everything that is
dishonorable to his Maker. What is it the Bible teaches us? – rapine,
cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? – to believe
that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to
be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly
scattered in these books, they make no part of this pretended thing,
revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and
the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it
cannot exist, and are nearly the same in all religions and in all
societies.
The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and
where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. The
doctrine of not retaliating injuries is much better expressed in Prov-
erbs, which is a collection as well from the Gentiles as the Jews, than
it is in the Testament. It is there said (Proverbs xxv, ver. 21), “If thine
enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him
water to drink;8” but when it is said, as in the Testament, “If a man
smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also”; it is assas-
sinating the dignity of forbearance, an d sinking man into a spaniel.
Loving of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has
besides no meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he
does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political
sense, for there is no end to retaliation, each retaliates on the other,
and calls it justice; but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could
be done, would be to offer a premium for crime. Besides, the word
enemies is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which
ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb.
If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as
in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man
is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is in-
cumbent upon us, and it contributes also to our own tranquility, that
we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear. But even
this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other
part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is
morally and physically impossible.
Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first
place, are impossible to be performed; and, if they could be, would
be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The
maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this
strange doctrine of loving enemies: for no man expects to be loved
himself for his crime or for his enmity.
Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies are in
general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so do-
ing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy
should act the reverse of what it preaches.
Thomas Paine 148
For my own part I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a

feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I
have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the
American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in
any case, returned evil for evil. But it is not incumbent on man to re-
ward a bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil; and
whenever it is done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty.
It is also absurd to suppose that such doctrine can make any part
of a revealed religion. We imitate the moral character of the Creator
by forbearing with each other, for He forbears with all; but this doc-
trine would imply that He loved man, not in proportion as he was
good, but as he was bad.
If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see
there is no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion. What is it
we want to know? Does not the creation, the universe we behold,
preach to us the existence of an Almighty Power that governs and
regulates the whole? And is not the evidence that this creation holds
out to our senses infinitely stronger than anything we can read in a
book that any impostor might make and call the Word of God? As for
morality, the knowledge of it exists in every man’s conscience.
Here we are. The existence of an Almighty Power is sufficiently
demonstrated to us, though we cannot conceive, as it is impossible
we should, the nature and manner of its existence. We cannot con-
ceive how we came here ourselves, and yet we know for a fact that
we are here.
We must know also that the Power that called us into being, can,
if He pleases, and when He pleases, call us to account for the manner
in which we have lived here; and, therefore, without seeking any
other motive for the belief, it is rational to believe that He will, for we
know beforehand that He can. The probability or even possibility of
the thing is all that we ought to know; for if we knew it as a fact, we
should be the mere slaves of terror; our belief would have no merit,
and our best actions no virtue.
Deism, then, teaches us, without the possibility of being de-
ceived, all that is necessary or proper to be known. The creation is
the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Cre-
ator Himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of

His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.
The probability that we may be called to account hereafter will,
to a reflecting mind, have the influence of belief; for it is not our be-
lief or our disbelief that can make or unmake the fact. As this is the
state we are in, and which it is proper we should be in, as free agents,
it is the fool only, and not the philosopher, or even the prudent man,
that would live as if there were no God.
But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the
strange fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures re-
lated in the Bible, and of the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the
Testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog. Viewing
all these things in a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable; and
as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition to reject all.
But the belief of a God is a belief distinct from all other things,
and ought not to be confounded with any. The notion of a Trinity of
Gods has enfeebled the belief of one God. A multiplication of beliefs
acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided it
is weakened.
Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form, instead of
fact – of notion, instead of principles; morality is banished to make
room for an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin
in a supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of God; an exe-
cution is an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves with
the blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the bril-
liancy it gives them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits of
the execution; then praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and con-
demn the Jews for doing it. A man, by hearing all this nonsense
lumped and preached together, confounds the God of the creation
with the imagined God of the Christians, and lives as if there were
none.
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is
none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man,
more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this
thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to
convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart tor-
pid, it produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power, it
Thomas Paine 150
serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the ava-

rice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it
leads to nothing here or hereafter.
The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it
every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple Deism. It
must have been the first, and will probably be the last, that man be-
lieves. But pure and simple Deism does not answer the purpose of
despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine,
but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their own au-
thority a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but by in-
corporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming,
like the government, a party in the system. It is this that forms the
otherwise mysterious connection of Church and State; the Church
humane, and the State tyrannic.
Were man impressed as fully and as strongly as he ought to be
with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the
force of that belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and
would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. To
give this belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts
alone. This is Deism. But when, according to the Christian Trinitar-
ian scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and an-
other part called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible
*
that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits.
It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the
other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the
Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights.
The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are cal-
culated for mutual support.
The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the
study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it
[*]The book called the book of Matthew says, (chap, iii, verse 16), that
the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove. It might as well have
said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as
much of a nonsensical lie as the other. The second of Acts, verse, 2, 3,
says that it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in the shape of cloven
tongues, perhaps it was cloven feet. Such absurd stuff is only fit for tales
of witches and wizards. – Author.
proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate noth-

ing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a
science, without our being in possession of the principles upon
which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theol-
ogy, it is therefore the study of nothing.
Instead then, of studying theology, as is now done, out of the Bi-
ble and Testament, the meanings of which books are always contro-
verted and the authenticity of which is disproved, it is necessary that
we refer to the Bible of the Creation. The principles we discover
there are eternal and of divine origin; they are the foundation of all
the science that exists in the world, and must be the foundation of
theology.
We can know God only through His works. We cannot have a
conception of any one attribute but by following some principle that
leads to it. We have only a confused idea of His power, if we have not
the means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can
have no idea of His wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in
which it acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for
the Creator of man is the Creator of science; and it is through that
medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face.
Could a man be placed in a situation, and endowed with the
power of vision, to behold at one view, and to contemplate deliber-
ately, the structure of the universe; to mark the movements of the
several planets, the cause of their varying appearances, the unerring
order in which they revolve, even to the remotest comet; their con-
nection and dependence on each other, and to know the system of
laws established by the Creator, that governs and regulates the
whole, he would then conceive, far beyond what any church theol-
ogy can teach him, the power, the wisdom, the vastness, the munifi-
cence of the Creator; he would then see, that all the knowledge man
has of science, and that all the mechanical arts by which he renders
his situation comfortable here, are derived from that source; his
mind, exalted by the scene, and convinced by the fact, would in-
crease in gratitude as it increased in knowledge; his religion or his
worship would become united with his improvement as a man; any
employment he followed, that had any connection with the princi-
ples of the creation, as everything of agriculture, of science and of
Thomas Paine 152
the mechanical arts has, would teach him more of God, and of the
gratitude he owes to Him, than any theological Christian sermon he
now hears.
Great objects inspire great thoughts; great munificence excites
great gratitude; but the groveling tales and doctrines of the Bible and
the Testament are fit only to excite contempt.
Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual scene
I have described, he can demonstrate it, because he has a knowledge
of the principles upon which the creation is constructed.9 We know
that the greatest works can be represented in model, and that the uni-
verse can be represented by the same means.
The same principles by which we measure an inch, or an acre of
ground, will measure to millions in extent. A circle of an inch diame-
ter has the same geometrical properties as a circle that would circum-
scribe the universe.
The same properties of a triangle that will demonstrate upon pa-
per the course of a ship, will do it on the ocean; and when applied to
what are called the heavenly bodies, will ascertain to a minute the
time of an eclipse, though these bodies are millions of miles from us.
This knowledge is of divine origin, and it is from the Bible of the
Creation that man has learned it, and not from the stupid Bible of the
Church, that teacheth man nothing.
All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the
aid of which his existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and
without which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance
and condition from a common animal, comes from the great machine
and structure of the universe.
The constant and unwearied observations of our ancestors upon
the movements and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in what are
supposed to have been the early ages of the world, have brought this
knowledge upon earth. It is not Moses and the prophets, nor Jesus
Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it. The Almighty is the great
mechanic of the creation; the first philosopher and original teacher
of all science. Let us, then, learn to reverence our master, and let us
not forget the labors of our ancestors.
Had we, at this day, no knowledge of machinery, and were it

possible that man could have a view, as I have before described, of
the structure and machinery of the universe, he would soon conceive
the idea of constructing some at least of the mechanical works we
now have; and the idea so conceived would progressively advance in
practice. Or could a model of the universe, such as is called an orrery,
be presented before him and put in motion, his mind would arrive at
the same idea.
Such an object and such a subject would, while it improved him
in knowledge useful to himself as a man and a member of society, as
well as entertaining, afford far better matter for impressing him with
a knowledge of, and a belief in, the Creator, and of the reverence and
gratitude that man owes to Him, than the stupid texts of the Bible and
of the Testament from which, be the talents of the preacher what they
may, only stupid sermons can be preached.
If man must preach, let him preach something that is edifying,
and from texts that are known to be true.
The Bible of the Creation is inexhaustible in texts. Every part of
science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with
the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of in-
animate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy – for
gratitude as for human improvement. It will perhaps be said, that if
such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every
preacher ought to be a philosopher. Most certainly; and every house
of devotion a school of science.
It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science,
and the light use of reason, and setting up an invented thing called re-
vealed religion, that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have
been formed of the Almighty.
The Jews have made Him the assassin of the human species to
make room for the religion of the Jews. The Christians have made
Him the murderer of himself and the founder of a new religion, to su-
persede and expel the Jewish religion. And to find pretence and ad-
mission for these things, they must have supposed His power or His
wisdom imperfect, or His will changeable; and the changeableness
of the will is imperfection of the judgment.
Thomas Paine 154
The philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator have never
changed with respect either to the principles of science, or the prop-
erties of matter. Why, then, is it supposed they have changed with re-
spect to man?
I here close the subject. I have shown in all the foregoing parts
of this work, that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forg-
eries; and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it, to be re-
futed, if any one can do it: and I leave the ideas that are suggested in
the conclusion of the work, to rest on the mind of the reader; certain
as I am, that when opinions are free, either in matters of government
or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail.
END OF PART SECOND

PART THIRD
EXAMINATION OF THE PROPHECIES
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
To the Ministers and Preachers of all Denominations of Religion

T is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to de-
I tect and expose delusion and error. But nature has not given to
everyone a talent for the purpose; and among those to whom such a
talent is given, there is often a want of disposition or of courage to do
it.
The world, or more properly speaking, that small part of it called
Christendom, or the Christian world, has been amused for more than
a thousand years with accounts of Prophecies in the Old Testament
about the coming of the person called Jesus Christ, and thousands of
sermons have been preached, and volumes written, to make man be-
lieve it.
In the following treatise I have examined all the passages in the
New Testament, quoted from the Old, and called prophecies con-
cerning Jesus Christ, and I find no such thing as a prophecy of any
such person, and I deny there are any.
The passages all relate to circumstances the Jewish nation was
in at the time they were written or spoken, and not to anything that
was or was not to happen in the world several hundred years after-
wards; and I have shown what the circumstances were to which the
passages apply or refer.
I have given chapter and verse for everything I have said, and
have not gone out of the books of the Old and New Testament for evi-
dence that the passages are not prophecies of the person called Jesus
Christ.
Thomas Paine 156
The prejudice of unfounded belief, often degenerates into the

prejudice of custom, and becomes at last rank hypocrisy. When men,
from custom or fashion or any worldly motive, profess or pretend to
believe what they do not believe, nor can give any reason for believ-
ing, they unship the helm of their morality, and being no longer hon-
est to their own minds they feel no moral difficulty in being unjust to
others.
It is from the influence of this vice, hypocrisy, that we see so
many church-and-meeting-going professors and pretenders to reli-
gion so full of trick and deceit in their dealings, and so loose in the
performance of their engagements that they are not to be trusted fur-
ther than the laws of the country will bind them. Morality has no hold
on their minds, no restraint on their actions.
One set of preachers make salvation to consist in believing.
They tell their congregations that if they believe in Christ their sins
shall be forgiven. This, in the first place, is an encouragement to sin,
in a similar manner as when a prodigal young fellow is told his father
will pay all his debts, he runs into debt the faster, and becomes the
more extravagant. Daddy, says he, pays all, and on he goes: just so in
the other case, Christ pays all, and on goes the sinner.
In the next place, the doctrine these men preach is not true. The
New Testament rests itself for credibility and testimony on what are
called prophecies in the Old Testament of the person called Jesus
Christ; and if there are no such things as prophecies of any such per-
son in the Old Testament, the New Testament is a forgery of the
Councils of Nice and Laodicea, and the faith founded thereon delu-
sion and falsehood.*
Another set of preachers tell their congregations that God pre-
destinated and selected, from all eternity, a certain number to be
saved, and a certain number to be damned eternally. If this were true,
* The councils of Nice and Laodicea were held about three hundred and
fifty years after the time Christ is said to have lived; and the books that
now compose the New Testament, were then voted for by YEAS and
NAYS, as we now vote a law. A great many that were offered had a ma-
jority of nays, and were rejected. This is the way the New Testament
came into being. – Author.
the day of Judgment IS PAST: their preaching is in vain, and they

had better work at some useful calling for their livelihood.
This doctrine, also, like the former, hath a direct tendency to de-
moralize mankind. Can a bad man be reformed by telling him, that if
he is one of those who was decreed to be damned before he was born
his reformation will do him no good; and if he was decreed to be
saved, he will be saved whether he believes it or not? For this is the
result of the doctrine. Such preaching and such preachers do injury to
the moral world. They had better be at the plow.
As in my political works my motive and object have been to
give man an elevated sense of his own character, and free him from
the slavish and superstitious absurdity of monarchy and hereditary
government, so in my publications on religious subjects my endeav-
ors have been directed to bring man to a right use of the reason that
God has given him, to impress on him the great principles of divine
morality, justice, mercy, and a benevolent disposition to all men, and
to all creatures, and to inspire in him a spirit of trust, confidence, and
consolation in his Creator, unshackled by the fables of books pre-
tending to be the Word of God.
— Thomas Paine
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
AN ESSAY ON DREAM
s a great deal is said in the New Testament about dreams, it
A is first necessary to explain the nature of Dream, and to
show by what operation of the mind a dream is produced during
sleep.
When this is understood we shall be the better enabled to judge
whether any reliance can be placed upon them; and consequently,
whether the several matters in the New Testament related of dreams
deserve the credit which the writers of that book and priests and
commentators ascribe to them.
In order to understand the nature of Dream, or of that which
passes in ideal vision during a state of sleep, it is first necessary to
understand the composition and decomposition of the human mind.
The three great faculties of the mind are IMAGINATION,
JUDGMENT, and MEMORY. Every action of the mind comes under
one or the other of these faculties. In a state of wakefulness, as in the
day-time, these three faculties are all active; but that is seldom the
case in sleep, and never perfectly: and this is the cause that our
dreams are not so regular and rational as our waking thoughts.
The seat of that collection of powers or faculties that constitute
what is called the mind, is in the brain. There is not, and cannot be,
any visible demonstration of this anatomically, but accidents hap-
pening to living persons show it to be so. An injury done to the brain
by a fracture of the skull, will sometimes change a wise man into a
childish idiot, – a being without a mind. But so careful has nature
been of that sanctum sanctorum of man, the brain, that of all the ex-
ternal accidents to which humanity is subject, this occurs the most
seldom. But we often see it happening by long and habitual intem-
perance.
Whether those three faculties occupy distinct apartments of the

brain, is known only to that ALMIGHTY POWER that formed and
organized it. We can see the external effects of muscular motion in
all the members of the body, though its premium mobile, or first
moving cause, is unknown to man.
Our external motions are sometimes the effect of intention,
sometimes not. If we are sitting and intend to rise, or standing and in-
tend to sit or to walk, the limbs obey that intention as if they heard the
order given. But we make a thousand motions every day, and that as
well waking as sleeping, that have no prior intention to direct them.
Each member acts as if it had a will or mind of its own.
Man governs the whole when he pleases to govern, but in the in-
terim the several parts, like little suburbs, govern themselves without
consulting the sovereign.
And all these motions, whatever be the generating cause, are ex-
ternal and visible. But with respect to the brain, no ocular observa-
tion can be made upon it. All is mystery; all is darkness in that womb
of thought.
Whether the brain is a mass of matter in continual rest whether it
has a vibrating pulsative motion, or a heaving and falling motion like
matter in fermentation; whether different parts of the brain have dif-
ferent motions according to the faculty that is employed, be it the
imagination, the judgment, or the memory, man knows nothing of.
He knows not the cause of his own wit. His own brain conceals it
from him.
Comparing invisible by visible things, as metaphysical can
sometimes be compared to physical things, the operations of these
distinct and several faculties have some resemblance to a watch. The
main spring which puts all in motion corresponds to the imagination;
the pendulum which corrects and regulates that motion, corresponds
to the judgment; and the hand and dial, like the memory, record the
operation.
Now in proportion as these several faculties sleep, slumber, or
keep awake, during the continuance of a dream, in that proportion
the dream will be reasonable or frantic, remembered or forgotten.
Thomas Paine 160
If there is any faculty in mental man that never sleeps, it is that

volatile thing the imagination. The case is different with the judg-
ment and memory. The sedate and sober constitution of the judgment
easily disposes it to rest; and as to the memory, it records in silence
and is active only when it is called upon.
That the judgment soon goes to sleep may be perceived by our

sometimes beginning to dream before we are fully asleep ourselves.
Some random thought runs in the mind, and we start, as it were, into
recollection that we are dreaming between sleeping and waking.
If a pendulum of a watch by any accident becomes displaced,

that it can no longer control and regulate the elastic force of the
spring, the works are instantly thrown into confusion, and continue
so as long as the spring continues to have force.
In like manner if the judgment sleeps while the imagination

keeps awake, the dream will be a riotous assemblage of misshapen
images and ranting ideas, and the more active the imagination is the
wilder the dream will be. The most inconsistent and the most impos-
sible things will appear right; because that faculty whose province it
is to keep order is in a state of absence. The master of the school is
gone out and the boys are in an uproar.
If the memory sleeps, we shall have no other knowledge of the

dream than that we have dreamt, without knowing what it was about.
In this case it is sensation rather than recollection that acts. The
dream has given us some sense of pain or trouble, and we feel it as a
hurt, rather than remember it as vision.
If the memory slumbers we shall have a faint remembrance of

the dream, and after a few minutes it will sometimes happen that the
principal passages of the dream will occur to us more fully. The
cause of this is that the memory will sometimes continue slumbering
or sleeping after we are awake ourselves, and that so fully, that it may
and sometimes does happen, that we do not immediately recollect
where we are, nor what we have been about, or have to do. But when
the memory starts into wakefulness it brings the knowledge of these
things back upon us like a flood of light, and sometimes the dream
with it.
But the most curious circumstance of the mind in a state of

dream, is the power it has to become the agent of every person, char-
acter and thing of which it dreams. It carries on conversation with
several, asks questions, hears answers, gives and receives informa-
tion, and it acts all these parts itself.
Yet however various and eccentric the imagination may be in
the creating of images and ideas, it cannot supply the place of mem-
ory with respect to things that are forgotten when we are awake. For
example, if we have forgotten the name of a person, and dream of
seeing him and asking him his name, he cannot tell it; for it is our-
selves asking ourselves the question.
But though the imagination cannot supply the place of real
memory, it has the wild faculty of counterfeiting memory. It dreams
of persons it never knew, and talks to them as if it remembered them
as old acquaintance. It relates circumstances that never happened,
and tells them as if they had happened. It goes to places that never
existed, and knows where all the streets and houses are, as if we had
been there before. The scenes it creates are often as scenes remem-
bered. It will sometimes act a dream within a dream, and, in the delu-
sion of dreaming, tell a dream it never dreamed, and tell it as if it was
from memory.
It may also be remarked, that the imagination in a dream has no
idea of time, as time. It counts only by circumstances; and if a suc-
cession of circumstances pass in a dream that would require a great
length of time to accomplish them, it will appear to the dreamer that a
length of time equal thereto has passed also.
As this is the state of the mind in a dream, it may rationally be
said that every person is mad once in twenty-four hours, for were he
to act in the day as he dreams in the night, he would be confined for a
lunatic. In a state of wakefulness, those three faculties being all ac-
tive, and acting in unison, constitute the rational man.
In dream it is otherwise, and, therefore, that state which is called
insanity appears to be no other than a dismission of those faculties,
and a cessation of the judgment during wakefulness, that we so often
experience during sleep; and idiocy, into which some persons have
fallen, is that cessation of all the faculties of which we can be sensi-
ble when we happen to wake before our memory.
Thomas Paine 162
In this view of the mind, how absurd it is to place reliance upon

dreams, and how much more absurd to make them a foundation for
religion; yet the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, begotten
by the Holy Ghost, a being never heard of before, stands on the fool-
ish story of an old man’s dream. “And behold the angel of the Lord
appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David,
fear not thou to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is con-
ceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.” – Matt. i. 20.
After this we have the childish stories of three or four other
dreams: about Joseph going into Egypt; about his coming back
again; about this, and about that, and this story of dreams has thrown
Europe into a dream for more than a thousand years.
All the efforts that nature, reason, and conscience have made to
awaken man from it, have been ascribed by priestcraft and supersti-
tion to the working of the devil, and had it not been for the American
Revolution, which, by establishing the universal right of conscience,
first opened the way to free discussion, and for the French Revolu-
tion that followed, this Religion of Dreams had continued to be
preached, and that after it had ceased to be believed. Those who
preached it and did not believe it, still believe the delusion necessary.
They were not bold enough to be honest, nor honest enough to be
bold.
Every new religion, like a new play, requires a new apparatus of
dresses and machinery, to fit the new characters it creates. The story
of Christ in the New Testament brings a new being upon the stage,
which it calls the Holy Ghost; and the story of Abraham, the father of
the Jews, in the Old Testament, gives existence to a new order of be-
ings it calls angels. There was no Holy Ghost before the time of
Christ, nor angels before the time of Abraham.
We hear nothing of these winged gentlemen, till more than two
thousand years, according to the Bible chronology, from the time
they say the heavens, the earth, and all therein were made. After this,
they hop about as thick as birds in a grove. The first we hear of, pays
his addresses to Hagar in the wilderness; then three of them visit Sa-
rah; another wrestles a fall with Jacob; and these birds of passage
having found their way to earth and back, are continually coming
and going. They eat and drink, and up again to heaven.
What they do with the food they carry away in their bellies, the
Bible does not tell us. Perhaps they do as the birds do, discharge it as
they fly; for neither the Scripture nor the Church hath told us there
are necessary houses for them in heaven. One would think that a sys-
tem loaded with such gross and vulgar absurdities as Scripture reli-
gion is could never have obtained credit; yet we have seen what
priestcraft and fanaticism could do, and credulity believe.
From angels in the Old Testament we get to prophets, to
witches, to seers of visions, and dreamers of dreams; and sometimes
we are told, as in I Sam. ix. 15, that God whispers in the ear. At other
times we are not told how the impulse was given, or whether sleep-
ing or waking. In II Sam. xxiv. 1, it is said, “And again the anger of
the lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against
them to say, Go number Israel and Judah.” And in I Chron. xxi. 1,
when the same story is again related, it is said, “And Satan stood up
against Israel, and moved David to number Israel.”
Whether this was done sleeping or waking, we are not told, but it
seems that David, whom they call “a man after God’s own heart,” did
not know by what spirit he was moved; and as to the men called in-
spired penmen, they agree so well about the matter, that in one book
they say that it was God, and in the other that it was the devil.
Yet this is trash that the Church imposes upon the world as the
WORD OF GOD; this is the collection of lies and contradictions
called the HOLY BIBLE! this is the rubbish called REVEALED
RELIGION!
The idea that writers of the Old Testament had of a God was
boisterous, contemptible, and vulgar. They make him the Mars of the
Jews, the fighting God of Israel, the conjuring God of their Priests
and Prophets. They tell us as many fables of him as the Greeks told of
Hercules. They pit him against Pharaoh, as it were to box with him,
and Moses carries the challenge. They make their God to say insult-
ingly, “I will get me honor upon Pharaoh and upon all his host, upon
his chariots and upon his horsemen.” And that He may keep His
word, they make Him set a trap in the Red Sea, in the dead of the
night, for Pharaoh, his host, and his horses, and drown them as a
rat-catcher would do so many rats. Great honor indeed! the story of
Jack the giant-killer is better told!
Thomas Paine 164
They match Him against the Egyptian magicians to conjure with

them, and after hard conjuring on both sides (for where there is no
great contest there is no great honor) they bring Him off victorious.
The first three essays are a dead match: each party turns his rod into a
serpent, the rivers into blood, and creates frogs: but upon the fourth,
the God of the Israelites obtains the laurel, He covers them all over
with lice! The Egyptian magicians cannot do the same, and this lousy
triumph proclaims the victory!
They make their God to rain fire and brimstone upon Sodom and
Gomorrah and belch fire and smoke upon Mount Sinai, as if He was
the Pluto of the lower regions. They make Him salt up Lot’s wife like
pickled pork; they make Him pass like Shakespeare’s Queen Mab
into the brain of their priests, prophets, and prophetesses, and tickle
them into dreams, and after making Him play all kinds of tricks they
confound Him with Satan, and leave us at a loss to know what God
they meant!
This is the descriptive God of the Old Testament; and as to the
New, though the authors of it have varied the scene, they have con-
tinued the vulgarity.
Is man ever to be the dupe of priestcraft, the slave of supersti-
tion? Is he never to have just ideas of his Creator? It is better not to
believe there is a God, than to believe of Him falsely. When we be-
hold the mighty universe that surrounds us, and dart our contempla-
tion into the eternity of space, filled with innumerable orbs revolving
in eternal harmony, how paltry must the tales of the Old and New
Testaments, profanely called the word of God, appear to thoughtful
man!
The stupendous wisdom and unerring order that reign and gov-
ern throughout this wondrous whole, and call us to reflection, put to
shame the Bible! The God of eternity and of all that is real, is not the
god of passing dreams and shadows of man’s imagination. The God
of truth is not the god of fable; the belief of a god begotten and a god
crucified, is a god blasphemed. It is making a profane use of reason.
I shall conclude this Essay on Dream with the first two verses of
Ecclesiastics xxxiv, one of the books of the Apocrypha. “The hopes
of a man void of understanding are vain and false; and dreams lift up
fools. Whoso regardeth dreams is like him that catcheth at a shadow,

and followeth after the wind.”
I now proceed to an examination of the passages in the Bible,
called prophecies of the coming of Christ, and to show there are no
prophecies of any such person; that the passages clandestinely styled
prophecies are not prophecies; and that they refer to circumstances
the Jewish nation was in at the time they were written or spoken, and
not to any distance of future time or person.
EXAMINATION OF THE
PROPHECIES
he passages called prophecies of, or concerning, Jesus
T Christ, in the Old Testament may be classed under the two
following heads.
First, those referred to in the four books of the New Testament,
called the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Secondly, those which translators and commentators have, of
their own imagination, erected into prophecies, and dubbed with that
title at the head of the several chapters of the Old Testament. Of these
it is scarcely worth while to waste time, ink, and paper upon; I shall,
therefore, confine myself chiefly to those referred to in the aforesaid
four books of the New Testament. If I show that these are not prophe-
cies of the person called Jesus Christ, nor have reference to any such
person, it will be perfectly needless to combat those which transla-
tors or the Church have invented, and for which they had no other au-
thority than their own imagination.
I begin with the book called the Gospel according to St. Mat-
thew.
In i. 18, it is said, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this
wise: When His mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they
came together, SHE WAS FOUND WITH CHILD OF THE HOLY
GHOST.”
This is going a little too fast; because to make this verse agree
with the next it should have said no more than that she was found
with child; for the next verse says, “Then Joseph her husband, being
a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was
minded to put her away privately.” Consequently Joseph had found
out no more than that she was with child, and he knew it was not by
himself.
Verses 20, 21. “And while he thought of these things, [that is

whether he should put her away privately, or make a public example
of her], behold the Angel of the Lord appeared to him IN A DREAM
[that is, Joseph dreamed that an angel appeared unto him] saying, Jo-
seph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for
that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall
bring forth a son, and call his name Jesus; for He shall save His peo-
ple from their sins.”
Now, without entering into any discussion upon the merits or
demerits of the account here given, it is proper to observe, that it has
no higher authority than that of a dream; for it is impossible to a man
to behold anything in a dream but that which he dreams of.
I ask not, therefore, whether Joseph if there was such a man had
such a dream or not, because admitting he had, it proves nothing. So
wonderful and irrational is the faculty of the mind in dream, that it
acts the part of all the characters its imagination creates, and what it
thinks it hears from any of them is no other than what the roving ra-
pidity of its own imagination invents. It is therefore nothing to me
what Joseph dreamed of; whether of the fidelity or infidelity of his
wife. I pay no regard to my own dreams, and I should be weak indeed
to put faith in the dreams of another.
The verses that follow those I have quoted, are the words of the
writer of the book of Matthew. “Now [says he] all this [that is, all this
dreaming and this pregnancy] was done that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken of the Lord by the Prophet, saying, Behold a virgin
shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his
name Emmanuel, which being interpreted, is, God with us.”
This passage is in Isaiah vii, 14, and the writer of the book of
Matthew endeavors to make his readers believe that this passage is a
prophecy of the person called Jesus Christ. It is no such thing, and I
go to show it is not. But it is first necessary that I explain the occasion
of these words being spoken by Isaiah.
The reader will then easily perceive that so far from their being
a prophecy of Jesus Christ, they have not the least reference to such a
person, nor to anything that could happen in the time that Christ is
said to have lived, which was about seven hundred years after the
time of Isaiah. The case is this:
Thomas Paine 168
On the death of Solomon the Jewish nation split into two monar-
chies: one called the kingdom of Judah, the capital of which was Je-
rusalem: the other the kingdom of Israel, the capital of which was
Samaria. The kingdom of Judah followed the line of David, and the
kingdom of Israel that of Saul; and these two rival monarchies fre-
quently carried on fierce wars against each other.
At this time Ahaz was King of Judah, which was in the time of
Isaiah, Pekah was King of Israel; and Pekah joined himself to Rezin,
King of Syria, to make war against Ahaz, King of Judah; and these
two kings marched a confederated and powerful army against Jeru-
salem. Ahaz and his people became alarmed at their danger, and
“their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the
wind.” Isaiah vii, 3.
In this perilous situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to
Ahaz, and assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all
the prophets), that these two kings should not succeed against him;
and to assure him that this should be the case (the case was however
directly contrary1) tells Ahaz to ask a sign of the Lord.
This Ahaz declined doing, giving as a reason, that he would not
tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who pretends to be sent from
God, says, verse 14, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a
sign, behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son – butter and
honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the
good – for before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose
the good, the land which thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her
kings” – meaning the King of Israel and the King of Syria who were
marching against him.
Here then is the sign, which was to be the birth of a child, and
that child a son; and here also is the time limited for the accomplish-
ment of the sign, namely, before the child should know to refuse the
evil and choose the good.
The thing, therefore, to be a sign of success to Ahaz, must be
something that would take place before the event of the battle then
pending between him and the two kings could be known. A thing to
be a sign must precede the thing signified. The sign of rain must be
before the rain.
It would have been mockery and insulting nonsense for Isaiah to

have assured Ahaz a sign that these two things should not prevail
against him, that a child should be born seven hundred years after he
was dead, and that before the child so born should know to refuse the
evil and choose the good, he, Ahaz, should be delivered from the
danger he was then immediately threatened with.
But the case is, that the child of which Isaiah speaks was his own
child, with which his wife or his mistress was then pregnant; for he
says in the next chapter (Is. viii, 2), “And I took unto me faithful wit-
nesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of
Jeberechiah; and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and
bear a son;” and he says, at verse 18 of the same chapter, “Behold I
and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for
wonders in Israel.”
It may not be improper here to observe, that the word translated
a virgin in Isaiah, doe not signify a virgin in Hebrew, but merely a
young woman. The tense is also falsified in the translation. Levi
gives the Hebrew text of Isaiah vii, 14, and the translation in English
with it – “Behold a young woman IS with child and beareth a son.”
The expression, says he, is in the present tense.
This translation agrees with the other circumstances related of
the birth of this child which was to be a sign to Ahaz. But as the true
translation could not have been imposed upon the world as a proph-
ecy of a child to be born seven hundred years afterwards, the Chris-
tian translators have falsified the original: and instead of making
Isaiah to say, behold a young woman IS with child and beareth a son,
they have made him to say, “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear
a son.”
It is, however, only necessary for a person to read Isaiah vii, and
viii, and he will be convinced that the passage in question is no
prophecy of the person called Jesus Christ. I pass on to the second
passage quoted from the Old Testament by the New, as a prophecy of
Jesus Christ.
Matthew ii, 1-6. “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of
Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold there came wise men
from the East to Jerusalem, saying, where is he that is born king of
the Jews? for we have seen his star in the East and are come to wor-
Thomas Paine 170
ship him. When Herod the king heard these things he was troubled,
and all Jerusalem with him; and when he had gathered all the chief
priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them
where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem,
in the land of Judea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou
Bethlehem, in the land of Judea, art not the least among the princes
of Judah, for out of thee shall come a Governor that shall rule my
people Israel.” This passage is in Micah v, 2.
I pass over the absurdity of seeing and following a star in the day
time, as a man would a will-with-the-wisp, or a candle and lantern at
night; and also that of seeing it in the East, when themselves came
from the East; for could such a thing be seen at all to serve them for a
guide, it must be in the West to them. I confine myself solely to the
passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
The book of Micah, in the passage above quoted, v, 2, is speak-
ing of some person, without mentioning his name, from whom some
great achievements were expected; but the description he gives of
this person, verse 5, 6, proves evidently that is not Jesus Christ, for
he says, “and this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall
come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall
we raise up against him [that is against the Assyrian] seven shep-
herds and eight principal men.
”And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and
the land of Nimrod on the entrance thereof; thus shall he [the person
spoken of at the head of the second verse] deliver us from the Assyr-
ian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our
borders.”
This is so evidently descriptive of a military chief, that it cannot
be applied to Christ without outraging the character they pretend to
give us of him. Besides which, the circumstances of the times here
spoken of, and those of the times in which Christ is said to have
lived, are in contradiction to each other.
It was the Romans, and not the Assyrians that had conquered
and were in the land of Judea, and trod in their palaces when Christ
was born, and when he died, and so far from his driving them out, it
was they who signed the warrant for his execution, and he suffered
under it.
Having thus shown that this is no prophecy of Jesus Christ, I

pass on to the third passage quoted from the Old Testament by the
New, as a prophecy of him. This, like the first I have spoken of, is in-
troduced by a dream. Joseph dreameth another dream, and dreameth
that he seeth another angel.
The account begins at Matthew ii, 13. “The angel of the Lord ap-
peared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise and take the young child
and his mother and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring
thee word: For Herod will seek the life of the young child to destroy
him.
”When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night
and departed into Egypt: and was there until the death of Herod, that
it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet,
saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.”
This passage is in the book of Hosea, xi, 1. The words are,
“When Israel was a child then I loved him and called my son out of
Egypt. As they called them so they went from them: they sacrificed
unto Baalim and burned incense to graven images.”
This passage, falsely called a prophecy of Christ, refers to the
children of Israel coming out of Egypt in the time of Pharaoh, and to
the idolatry they committed afterwards. To make it apply to Jesus
Christ, he then must be the person who sacrificed unto Baalim and
burned incense to graven images; for the person called out of Egypt
by the collective name, Israel, and the persons committing this idola-
try, are the same persons or the descendants of them.
This then can be no prophecy of Jesus Christ, unless they are
willing to make an idolater of him. I pass on to the fourth passage
called a prophecy by the writer of the book of Matthew.
This is introduced by a story told by nobody but himself, and
scarcely believed by anybody, of the slaughter of all the children un-
der two years old, by the command of Herod. A thing which it is not
probable should be done by Herod, as he only held an office under
the Roman Government, to which appeals could always be had, as
we see in the case of Paul. Matthew, however, having made or told
his story, says, ii, 17, 18, “Then was fulfilled that which was spoken
by Jeremy the prophet, saying – In Ramah was there a voice heard,
Thomas Paine 172
lamentation, and weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for

her children, and would not be comforted because they were not.”
This passage is in Jeremiah xxxi, 15; and this verse, when sepa-
rated from the verses before and after it, and which explain its appli-
cation, might with equal propriety be applied to every case of wars,
sieges, and other violences, such as the Christians themselves have
often done to the Jews, where mothers have lamented the loss of their
children.
There is nothing in the verse, taken singly, that designates or
points out any particular application of it, otherwise than it points to
some circumstances which, at the time of writing it, had already hap-
pened, and not to a thing yet to happen, for the verse is in the preter or
past tense. I go to explain the case and show the application of the
verse.
Jeremiah lived in the time that Nebuchadnezzar besieged, took,
plundered, and destroyed Jerusalem, and led the Jews captive to
Babylon. He carried his violence against the Jews to every extreme.
He slew the sons of King Zedekiah before his face, he then put out
the eyes of Zedekiah, and kept him in prison till the day of his death.
It is this time of sorrow and suffering to the Jews that Jeremiah is
speaking. Their Temple was destroyed, their land desolated, their na-
tion and government entirely broken up, and themselves, men,
women and children, carried into captivity. They had too many sor-
rows of their own, immediately before their eyes, to permit them, or
any of their chiefs, to be employing themselves on things that might,
or might not, happen in the world seven hundred years afterwards.
It is, as already observed, of this time of sorrow and suffering to
the Jews that Jeremiah is speaking in the verse in question. In the
next two verses (16, 17), he endeavors to console the sufferers by
giving them hopes, and, according to the fashion of speaking in those
days, assurances from the Lord, that their sufferings should have an
end, and that their children should return again to their own chil-
dren. But I leave the verses to speak for themselves, and the Old Tes-
tament to testify against the New.
Jeremiah xxxi, 15. “Thus saith the Lord, a voice was heard in
Ramah [it is in the preter tense], lamentation and bitter weeping: Ra-
chel, weeping for her children, refused to be comforted for her chil-
dren because they were not.” Verse 16, “Thus saith the Lord: Refrain
thy voice from weeping and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall
be rewarded, saith the Lord; and THEY shall come again from the
land of the enemy.” Verse 17. - “And there is hope in thine end, saith
the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border.”
By what strange ignorance or imposition is it, that the children
of which Jeremiah speaks (meaning the people of the Jewish nation,
scripturally called children of Israel, and not mere infants under two
years old), and who were to return again from the land of the enemy,
and come again into their own borders, can mean the children that
Matthew makes Herod to slaughter? Could those return again from
the land of the enemy, or how can the land of the enemy be applied to
them? Could they come again to their own borders?
Good heavens! How the world has been imposed upon by testa-
ment-makers, priestcraft, and pretended prophecies. I pass on to the
fifth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
This, like two of the former, is introduced by dream. Joseph
dreamed another dream, and dreameth of another angel. And Mat-
thew is again the historian of the dream and the dreamer. If it were
asked how Matthew could know what Joseph dreamed, neither the
Bishop nor all the Church could answer the question.
Perhaps it was Matthew that dreamed, and not Joseph; that is,
Joseph dreamed by proxy, in Matthew’s brain, as they tell us Daniel
dreamed for Nebuchadnezzar. But be this as it may, I go on with my
subject.
The account of this dream is in Matthew ii, 19-23. “But when
Herod was dead, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to
Joseph in Egypt, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his
mother and go into the land of Israel; for they are dead which sought
the young child’s life. And he arose and took the young child and his
mother, and came into the land of Israel.”
“But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea in the
room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go tither. Notwithstanding
being warned of God in a dream [here is another dream] he turned
aside into the parts of Galilee; and he came and dwelt in a city called
Thomas Paine 174
Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets,

He shall be called a Nazarene.”
Here is good circumstantial evidence that Matthew dreamed, for
there is no such passage in all the Old Testament; and I invite the
Bishop, and all the priests in Christendom, including those of Amer-
ica, to produce it. I pass on to the sixth passage, called a prophecy of
Jesus Christ.
This, as Swift says on another occasion, is lugged in head and
shoulders; it need only to be seen in order to be hooted as a forced
and farfetched piece of imposition.
Matthew, iv, 12-16, “Now when Jesus heard that John was cast
into prison, he departed into Galilee: and leaving Nazareth, he came
and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea-coast, in the borders
of Zebulon and Nephthalim: That it might be fulfilled which was
spoken by Esaias [Isaiah] the prophet, saying, The land of Zebulon
and the land of Nephtalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles; the people which sat in darkness saw great
light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light
is springing upon them.”
I wonder Matthew has not made the cris-cross-row, or the
Christ-cross-row (I know not how the priests spell it) into a proph-
ecy. He might as well have done this as cut out these unconnected
and undescriptive sentences from the place they stand in and dubbed
them with that title. The words however, are in Isaiah ix, 1, 2 as fol-
lows: “Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vex-
ation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulon and the
land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her by
the way of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations.”
All this relates to two circumstances that had already happened
at the time these words in Isaiah were written. The one, where the
land of Zebulon and Naphtali had been lightly afflicted, and after-
wards more grievously by the way of the sea.
But observe, reader, how Matthew has falsified the text. He be-
gins his quotation at a part of the verse where there is not so much as
a comma, and thereby cuts off everything that relates to the first af-
fliction. He then leaves out all that relates to the second affliction,
and by this means leaves out everything that makes the verse intelli-
gible, and reduces it to a senseless skeleton of names of towns.
To bring this imposition of Matthew clearly and immediately
before the eye of the reader, I will repeat the verse, and put between
brackets [] the words he has left out, and put in italics those that he
has preserved.
“[Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexa-
tion when at the first he lightly afflicted] the land of Zebulon and the
land of Naphtali, [and did afterwards more grievously afflict her] by
the way of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations.”
What gross imposition is it to gut, as the phrase is, a verse in this
manner, render it perfectly senseless, and then puff it off on a credu-
lous world as a prophecy. I proceed to the next verse.
Verse 2. “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great
light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them
hath the light shined.” All this is historical, and not in the least pro-
phetical. The whole is in the preter tense: it speaks of things that had
been accomplished at the time the words were written, and not of
things to be accomplished afterwards.
As then the passage is in no possible sense prophetical, nor in-
tended to be so, and that to attempt to make it so is not only to falsify
the original but to commit a criminal imposition, it is matter of no
concern to us, otherwise than as curiosity, to know who the people
were of which the passage speaks that sat in darkness, and what the
light was that had shined in upon them.
If we look into the preceding chapter, Isaiah viii, of which ix is
only a continuation, we shall find the writer speaking, at verse nine-
teen of “witches and wizards who peep about and mutter,” and of
people who made application to them; and he preaches and exhorts
them against this darksome practice.
It is of this people, and of this darksome practice, or walking in
darkness, that he is speaking at ix, 2; and with respect to the light that
had shined in upon them, it refers entirely to his own ministry, and to
the boldness of it, which opposed itself to that of the witches and wiz-
ards who peeped about and muttered.
Thomas Paine 176
Isaiah is, upon the whole, a wild, disorderly writer, preserving in

general no clear chain of perception in the arrangement of his ideas,
and consequently producing no defined conclusions from them.
It is the wildness of his style, the confusion of his ideas, and the
ranting metaphors he employs, that have afforded so many opportu-
nities to priestcraft in some cases, and to superstition in others, to im-
pose those defects upon the world as prophecies of Jesus Christ.
Finding no direct meaning in them, and not knowing what to
make of them, and supposing at the same time they were intended to
have a meaning, they supplied the defect by inventing a meaning of
their own, and called it his. I have however in this place done Isaiah
the justice to rescue him from the claws of Matthew, who has torn
him unmercifully to pieces, and from the imposition or ignorance of
priests and commentators, by letting Isaiah speak for himself.
If the words walking in darkness, and light breaking in, could in
any case be applied prophetically, which they cannot be, they would
better apply to the times we now live in than to any other. The world
has “walked in darkness” for eighteen hundred years, both as to reli-
gion and government, and it is only since the American Revolution
began that light has broken in.
The belief of one God, whose attributes are revealed to us in the
book or scripture of the creation, which no human hand can counter-
feit or falsify, and not in the written or printed book which, as Mat-
thew has shown, can be altered or falsified by ignorance or design, is
now making its way among us: and as to government, the light is al-
ready gone forth, and while men ought to be careful not to be blinded
by the excess of it, as at a certain time in France when everything was
Robespierrean violence, they ought to reverence, and even to adore
it, with all the perseverance that true wisdom can inspire.
I pass on to the seventh passage, called a prophecy of Jesus
Christ.
Matthew viii, 16, 17. “When the evening was come, they
brought unto him [Jesus] many that were possessed with devils, and
he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick:
That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias [Isaiah] the
prophet, saying, himself took our infirmities, and bare our sickness.”
This affair of people being possessed by devils, and of casting

them out, was the fable of the day when the books of the New Testa-
ment were written. It had not existence at any other time. The books
of the Old Testament mention no such thing; the people of the pres-
ent day know of no such thing; nor does the history of any people or
country speak of such a thing. It starts upon us all at once in the book
of Matthew, and is altogether an invention of the New Testament
makers and the Christian Church.
The book of Matthew is the first book where the word devil is
mentioned.* We read in some of the books of the Old Testament of
things called familiar spirits, the supposed companion of people
called witches and wizards. It was no other than the trick of pre-
tended conjurers to obtain money from credulous and ignorant peo-
ple, or the fabricated charge of superstitious malignancy against
unfortunate and decrepit old age. But the idea of a familiar spirit, if
we can affix any idea to the term, is exceedingly different to that of
being possessed by a devil.
In the one case, the supposed familiar spirit is a dexterous agent,
that comes and goes and does as he is bidden; in the other, he is a tur-
bulent roaring monster, that tears and tortures the body into convul-
sions. Reader, whoever thou art, put thy trust in thy Creator, make
use of the reason He endowed thee with, and cast from thee all such
fables.
The passage alluded to by Matthew, for as a quotation it is false,
is in Isaiah, liii, 4, which is as follows: “Surely he [the person of
whom Isaiah is speaking] hath borne our griefs and carried our sor-
rows.” It is in the preter tense.
Here is nothing about casting out devils, nor curing of sick-
nesses. The passage, therefore, so far from being a prophecy of
Christ, is not even applicable as a circumstance.
Isaiah, or at least the writer of the book that bears his name, em-
ploys the whole of this chapter, liii, in lamenting the sufferings of
some deceased persons, of whom he speaks very pathetically. It is a
monody on the death of a friend; but he mentions not the name of the
person, nor gives any circumstance of him by which he can be per-
* The word devil is a personification of the word evil. – Author.

Thomas Paine 178
sonally known; and it is this silence, which is evidence of nothing,

that Matthew has laid hold of, to put the name of Christ to it; as if the
chiefs of the Jews, whose sorrows were then great, and the times they
lived in big with danger, were never thinking about their own affairs,
nor the fate of their own friends, but were continually running a
wild-goose chase into futurity.
To make a monody into a prophecy is an absurdity. The charac-

ters and circumstances of men, even in the different ages of the
world, are so much alike, that what is said of one may with propriety
be said of many; but this fitness does not make the passage into a
prophecy; and none but an imposter, or a bigot, would call it so.
Isaiah, in deploring the hard fate and loss of his friend, mentions
nothing of him but what the human lot of man is subject to. All the
cases he states of him, his persecutions, his imprisonment, his pa-
tience in suffering, and his perseverance in principle, are all within
the line of nature; they belong exclusively to none, and may with
justness be said of many.
But if Jesus Christ was the person the Church represents him to
be, that which would exclusively apply to him must be something
that could not apply to any other person; something beyond the line
of nature, something beyond the lot of mortal man; and there are no
such expressions in this chapter, nor any other chapter in the Old
Testament.
It is no exclusive description to say of a person, as is said of the

person Isaiah is lamenting in this chapter, He was oppressed and he
was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to
the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so he
openeth not his mouth. This may be said of thousands of persons,
who have suffered oppressions and unjust death with patience, si-
lence, and perfect resignation.
Grotius, whom the Bishop [of Llandaff] esteems a most learned

man, and who certainly was so, supposes that the person of whom
Isaiah is speaking, is Jeremiah. Grotius is led into this opinion from
the agreement there is between the description given by Isaiah and
the case of Jeremiah, as stated in the book that bears his name.
If Jeremiah was an innocent man, and not a traitor in the interest

of Nebuchadnezzar when Jerusalem was besieged, his case was
hard; he was accused by his countrymen, was persecuted, oppressed,
and imprisoned, and he says of himself, (see Jer. xi. 19) “But as for
me I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter.”
I should be inclined to the same opinion with Grotius, had Isaiah
lived at the time when Jeremiah underwent the cruelties of which he
speaks; but Isaiah died about fifty years before; and it is of a person
of his own time whose case Isaiah is lamenting in the chapter in
question, and which imposition and bigotry, more than seven hun-
dred years afterwards, perverted into a prophecy of a person they call
Jesus Christ.
I pass on to the eighth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xii, 14-21: “Then the Pharisees went out and held a
council against him, how they might destroy him. But when Jesus
knew it he withdrew himself; and great numbers followed him and
he healed them all; and he charged them they should not make him
known; That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias [Isa-
iah] the prophet, saying, Behold my servant, whom I have chosen;
my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased; I will put my spirit
upon him, and he shall show judgment to the Gentiles.
”He shall not strive nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice
in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax
shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory. And in
his name shall the Gentiles trust.”
In the first place, this passage hath not the least relation to the
purpose for which it is quoted.
Matthew says, that the Pharisees held a council against Jesus to
destroy him – that Jesus withdrew himself – that great numbers fol-
lowed him – that he healed them – and that he charged them they
should not make him known. But the passage Matthew has quoted as
being fulfilled by these circumstances does not so much as apply to
any one of them.
It has nothing to do with the Pharisees holding a council to de-
stroy Jesus – with his withdrawing himself – with great numbers fol-
Thomas Paine 180
lowing him - with his healing them - nor with his charging them not
to make him known.
The purpose for which the passage is quoted, and the passage it-
self, are as remote from each other, as nothing from something. But
the case is, that people have been so long in the habit of reading the
books called the Bible and Testament with their eyes shut, and their
senses locked up, that the most stupid inconsistencies have passed on
them for truth, and imposition for prophecy. The All wise Creator
hath been dishonored by being made the author of fable, and the hu-
man mind degraded by believing it.
In this passage, as in that last mentioned, the name of the person
of whom the passage speaks is not given, and we are left in the dark
respecting him. It is this defect in the history that bigotry and imposi-
tion have laid hold of, to call it prophecy.
Had Isaiah lived in the time of Cyrus, the passage would de-
scriptively apply to him. As King of Persia, his authority was great
among the Gentiles, and it is of such a character the passage speaks;
and his friendship for the Jews, whom he liberated from captivity,
and who might then be compared to a bruised reed, was extensive.
But this description does not apply to Jesus Christ, who had no
authority among the Gentiles; and as to his own countrymen, figura-
tively described by the bruised reed, it was they who crucified him.
Neither can it be said of him that he did not cry, and that his voice
was not heard in the street. As a preacher it was his business to be
heard, and we are told that he traveled about the country for that
purpose.
Matthew has given a long sermon, which (if his authority is
good, but which is much to be doubted since he imposes so much) Je-
sus preached to a multitude upon a mountain, and it would be a quib-
ble to say that a mountain is not a street, since it is a place equally as
public.
The last verse in the passage (the fourth) as it stands in Isaiah,
and which Matthew has not quoted, says, “He shall not fail nor be
discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth, and the isles shall
wait for his law.” This also applies to Cyrus. He was not discouraged,
he did not fail, he conquered all Babylon, liberated the Jews, and es-
tablished laws.
But this cannot be said of Jesus Christ, who in the passage be-
fore us, according to Matthew, [xii, 15], withdrew himself for fear of
the Pharisees, and charged the people that followed him not to make
it known where he was; and who, according to other parts of the Tes-
tament, was continually moving from place to place to avoid being
apprehended.2
But it is immaterial to us, at this distance of time, to know who
the person was: it is sufficient to the purpose I am upon, that of de-
tecting fraud and falsehood, to know who it was not, and to show it
was not the person called Jesus Christ.
I pass on to the ninth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xxi. 1-5. “And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem,
and were come to Bethpage, unto the Mount of Olives, then Jesus
sent two of his disciples, saying unto them, Go into the village over
against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with
her; loose them and bring them unto me. And if any man say ought to
you, ye shall say, the Lord hath need of them, and straightway he will
send them. All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spo-
ken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold thy
King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the
foal of an ass.”
Poor ass! let it be some consolation amidst all thy sufferings,
that if the heathen world erected a bear into a constellation, the
Christian world has elevated thee into a prophecy.
This passage is in Zechariah ix, 9, and is one of the whims of
friend Zechariah to congratulate his countrymen, who were then re-
turning from captivity in Babylon, and himself with them, to Jerusa-
lem. It has no concern with any other subject. It is strange that
apostles, priests, and commentators, never permit, or never suppose,
the Jews to be speaking of their own affairs.
Everything in the Jewish books is perverted and distorted into
meanings never intended by the writers. Even the poor ass must not
be a Jew-ass but a Christian-ass. I wonder they did not make an apos-
Thomas Paine 182
tle of him, or a bishop, or at least make him speak and prophesy. He

could have lifted up his voice as loud as any of them.
Zechariah, in the first chapter of his book, indulges himself in
several whims on the joy of getting back to Jerusalem. He says at the
eighth verse, “I saw by night [Zechariah was a sharpsighted seer] and
behold a man setting on a red horse [yes reader, a red horse], and he
stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom, and behind him
were red horses, speckled and white.” He says nothing about green
horses, nor blue horses, perhaps because it is difficult to distinguish
green from blue by night, but a Christian can have no doubt they
were there, because “faith is the evidence of things not seen.”
Zechariah then introduces an angel among his horses, but he
does not tell us what color the angel was of, whether black or white,
nor whether he came to buy horses, or only to look at them as curiosi-
ties, for certainly they were of that kind. Be this however as it may,
he enters into conversation with this angel on the joyful affair of get-
ting back to Jerusalem, and he saith at the sixteenth verse, “There-
fore, thus saith the Lord, I AM RETURNED to Jerusalem with
mercies; my house shall be built in it saith the Lord of hosts, and a
line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem.” An expression signi-
fying the rebuilding the city.
All this, whimsical and imaginary as it is, sufficiently proves
that it was the entry of the Jews into Jerusalem from captivity, and
not the entry of Jesus Christ seven hundred years afterwards, that is
the subject upon which Zechariah is always speaking.
As to the expression of riding upon an ass, which commentators
represent as a sign of humility in Jesus Christ, the case is, he never
was so well mounted before. The asses of those countries are large
and well proportioned, and were anciently the chief of riding ani-
mals. Their beasts of burden, and which served also for the convey-
ance of the poor, were camels and dromedaries. We read in Judges x,
4, that Jair [one of the Judges of Israel] “had thirty sons that rode on
thirty ass-colts, and they had thirty cities.” But commentators distort
everything.
There is besides very reasonable grounds to conclude that this
story of Jesus riding publicly into Jerusalem, accompanied, as it is
said at verses eight and nine, by a great multitude, shouting and re-
joicing and spreading their garments by the way, is a story altogether

destitute of truth.
In the last passage called a prophecy that I examined, Jesus is
represented as withdrawing, that is, running away, and concealing
himself for fear of being apprehended, and charging the people that
were with him not to make him known. No new circumstance had
arisen in the interim to change his condition for the better; yet here he
is represented as making his public entry into the same city from
which he had fled for safety. The two cases contradict each other so
much, that if both are not false, one of them at least can scarcely be
true.
For my own part, I do not believe there is one word of historical
truth in the whole book. I look upon it at best to be a romance; the
principal personage of which is an imaginary or allegorical character
founded upon some tale, and in which the moral is in many parts
good, and the narrative part very badly and blunderingly written.
I pass on to the tenth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
Matthew xxvi, 51-56: “And behold one of them which was with
Jesus [meaning Peter] stretched out his hand, and drew his sword,
and struck a servant of the high priest, and smote off his ear. Then
said Jesus unto him, put up again thy sword into its place: for all they
that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I
cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more
than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be
fulfilled that thus it must be?
”In that same hour Jesus said to the multitudes, Are ye come out
as against a thief, with swords and with staves for to take me? I sat
daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me. But
all this was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be ful-
filled.”
This loose and general manner of speaking, admits neither of
detection nor of proof. Here is no quotation given, nor the name of
any Bible author mentioned, to which reference can be had.
There are, however, some high improbabilities against the truth
of the account.
Thomas Paine 184
First – It is not possible that the Jews, who were then a con-
quered people, and under subjection to the Romans, should be per-
mitted to wear swords.
Secondly – If Peter had attacked the servant of the high priest
and cut off his ear, he would have been immediately taken up by the
guard that took up his master and sent to prison with him.
Thirdly – What sort of disciples and preaching apostles must
those of Christ have been that wore swords?
Fourthly – This scene is represented to have taken place the
same evening of what is called the Lord’s supper, which makes, ac-
cording to the ceremony of it, the inconsistency of wearing swords
the greater.
I pass on to the eleventh passage called a prophecy of Jesus
Christ.
Matthew xxvii, 3-10: “Then Judas, which had betrayed him,
when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought
again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying,
I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they
said, What is that to us, see thou to that. And he cast down the thirty
pieces of silver, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
”And the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, it is not
lawful to put them in the treasury, because it is the price of blood.
And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to
bury strangers in. Wherefore that field is called the field of blood
unto this day.
“Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the
prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of
him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value,
and gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord appointed me.”
This is a most barefaced piece of imposition. The passage in Jer-
emiah which speaks of the purchase of a field, has no more to do with
the case to which Matthew applies it, than it has to do with the pur-
chase of lands in America. I will recite the whole passage:
Jeremiah xxxii, 6-15: “And Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord
came unto me, saying, Behold Hanameel, the son of Shallum thine
uncle, shall come unto thee, saying, Buy thee my field that is in
Anathoth, for the right of redemption is thine to buy it. So Hanameel

mine uncle’s son came to me in the court of the prison, according to
the word of the Lord, and said unto me, Buy my field I pray thee that
is in Anathoth, which is in the country of Benjamin; for the right of
inheritance is thine, and the redemption is thine; buy it for thyself.
”Then I knew this was the word of the Lord. And I bought the
field of Hanameel mine uncle’s son, that was in Anathoth, and
weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver. And I sub-
scribed the evidence and sealed it, and took witnesses and weighed
him the money in the balances.
“So I took the evidence of the purchase, both that which was
sealed according to the law and custom, and that which was open;
and I gave the evidence of the purchase unto Baruch the son of
Neriah, the son of Maaseiah, in the sight of Hanameel mine uncle’s
son, and in the presence of the witnesses that subscribed [the book of
the purchase], before all the Jews that sat in the court of the prison.
”And I charged Baruch before them, saying, Thus saith the Lord
of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these evidences, this evidence of the
purchase, both which is sealed, and this evidence which is open, and
put them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days. For
thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and
vineyards shall be possessed again in this land.”
I forebear making any remark on this abominable imposition of
Matthew. The thing glaringly speaks for itself. It is priests and com-
mentators that I rather ought to censure, for having preached false-
hood so long, and kept people in darkness with respect to those
impositions.
I am not contending with these men upon points of doctrine, for
I know that sophistry has always a city of refuge. I am speaking of
facts; for wherever the thing called a fact is a falsehood, the faith
founded upon it is delusion, and the doctrine raised upon it not true.
Ah, reader, put thy trust in thy Creator, and thou wilt be safe; but if
thou trustest to the book called the Scriptures thou trustest to the rot-
ten staff of fable and falsehood. But I return to my subject.
There is among the whims and reveries of Zechariah, mention
made of thirty pieces of silver given to a potter. They can hardly have
Thomas Paine 186
been so stupid as to mistake a potter for a field: and if they had, the
passage in Zechariah has no more to do with Jesus, Judas, and the
field to bury strangers in, than that already quoted. I will recite the
passage.
Zechariah xi, 7-14: “And I will feed the flock of slaughter, even
you, O poor of the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I
called Beauty, the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock. Three
shepherds also I cut off in one month; and my soul lothed them, and
their soul also abhorred me. Then said I, I will not feed you; that
which dieth, let it die; and that which is to be cut off, let it be cut off;
and let the rest eat everyone the flesh of another.
”And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I
might break my covenant which I had made with all the people. And
it was broken in that day; and so the poor of the flock who waited
upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord. And I said unto them,
If ye think good, give me my price, and if not, forbear. So they
weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.
“And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter; a goodly
price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of sil-
ver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord. Then I cut
asunder mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brother-
hood between Judah and Israel.3”
There is no making either head or tail of this incoherent gibber-
ish. His two staves, one called Beauty and the other Bands, is so
much like a fairy tale, that I doubt if it had any other origin. There is,
however, no part that has the least relation to the case stated in Mat-
thew; on the contrary, it is the reverse of it. Here the thirty pieces of
silver, whatever it was for, is called a goodly price, it was as much as
the thing was worth, and according to the language of the day, was
approved of by the Lord, and the money given to the potter in the
house of the Lord.
In the case of Jesus and Judas, as stated in Matthew, the thirty
pieces of silver were the price of blood; the transaction was con-
demned by the Lord, and the money when refunded was refused ad-
mittance into the treasury. Everything in the two cases is the reverse
of each other.
Besides this, a very different and direct contrary account to that

of Matthew, is given of the affair of Judas, in the book called the
“Acts of the Apostles”; according to that book the case is, that so far
from Judas repenting and returning the money, and the high priests
buying a field with it to bury strangers in, Judas kept the money and
bought a field with it for himself; and instead of hanging himself as
Matthew says, that he fell headlong and burst asunder. Some com-
mentators endeavor to get over one part of the contradiction by ridic-
ulously supposing that Judas hanged himself first and the rope broke.
Acts i, 16-18: “Men and brethren, this Scripture must needs
have been fulfilled which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David
spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took
Jesus [David says not a word about Judas], for he [Judas] was num-
bered among us and obtained part of our ministry. Now this man pur-
chased a field with the reward of iniquity, and falling headlong, he
burst asunder in the midst and his bowels gushed out.”
Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament re-
vealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdi-
ties? I pass on to the twelfth passage called a prophecy of Jesus
Christ.
Matthew xxvii, 35: “And they crucified him, and parted his gar-
ments, casting lots; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture
did they cast lots.” This expression is in Psalm xxii, 18.
The writer of that Psalm (whoever he was, for the Psalms are a
collection and not the work of one man) is speaking of himself and
his own case, and not that of another. He begins this Psalm with the
words which the New Testament writers ascribed to Jesus Christ:
“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me” – words which
might be uttered by a complaining man without any great impropri-
ety, but very improperly from the mouth of a reputed God.
The picture which the writer draws of his own situation in this
Psalm, is gloomy enough. He is not prophesying, but complaining of
his own hard case. He represents himself as surrounded by enemies
and beset by persecutions of every kind; and by the way of showing
the inveteracy of his persecutors he says, “They parted my garments
among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.”
Thomas Paine 188
The expression is in the present tense; and is the same as to say,

they pursue me even to the clothes upon my back, and dispute how
they shall divide them. Besides, the word vesture does not always
mean clothing of any kind, but Property, or rather the admitting a
man to, or investing him with property; and as it is used in this Psalm
distinct from the word garment, it appears to be used in this sense.
But Jesus had no property; for they make him say of himself, “The
foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of
Man hath not where to lay his head.”
But be this as it may, if we permit ourselves to suppose the Al-
mighty would condescend to tell, by what is called the spirit of
prophecy, what could come to pass in some future age of the world, it
is an injury to our own faculties, and to our ideas of His greatness, to
imagine that it would be about an old coat, or an old pair of breeches,
or about anything which the common accidents of life, or the quar-
rels which attend it, exhibit every day.
That which is in the power of man to do, or in his will not to do,
is not subject for prophecy, even if there were such a thing, because it
cannot carry with it any evidence of divine power, or divine interpo-
sition.
The ways of God are not the ways of men. That which an Al-
mighty power performs, or wills, is not within the circle of human
power to do, or to control. But an executioner and his assistants
might quarrel about dividing the garments of a sufferer, or divide
them without quarrelling, and by that means fulfil the thing called a
prophecy, or set it aside.
In the passages before examined, I have exposed the falsehood
of them. In this I exhibit its degrading meanness, as an insult to the
Creator and an injury to human reason.
Here end the passages called prophecies by Matthew.
Matthew concludes his book by saying, that when Christ ex-
pired on the cross, the rocks rent, the graves opened, and the bodies
of many of the saints arose; and Mark says, there was darkness over
the land from the sixth hour until the ninth.
They produce no prophecy for this; but had these things been
facts, they would have been a proper subject for prophecy, because
none but an Almighty power could have inspired a foreknowledge of

them, and afterwards fulfilled them. Since then there is no such
prophecy, but a pretended prophecy of an old coat, the proper deduc-
tion is, there were no such things, and that the book of Matthew was
fable and falsehood.
I pass on to the book called the Gospel according to St. Mark.
THE BOOK OF MARK

There are but few passages in Mark called prophecies; and but
few in Luke and John. Such as there are I shall examine, and also
such other passages as interfere with those cited by Matthew.
Mark begins his book by a passage which he puts in the shape of
a prophecy. Mark i, 1,2. – “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God: As it is written in the prophets, Behold I send
my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before
thee.” (Malachi iii,1)
The passage in the original is in the first person. Mark makes
this passage to be a prophecy of John the Baptist, said by the Church
to be a forerunner of Jesus Christ. But if we attend to the verses that
follow this expression, as it stands in Malachi, and to the first and
fifth verses of the next chapter, we shall see that this application of it
is erroneous and false.
Malachi having said, at the first verse, “Behold I will send my
messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me,” says, at the sec-
ond verse, “But who may abide the day of his coming? And who
shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like
fuller’s soap.”
This description can have no reference to the birth of Jesus
Christ, and consequently none to John the Baptists. It is a scene of
fear and terror that is here described, and the birth of Christ is always
spoken of as a time of joy and glad tidings.
Malachi, continuing to speak on the same subject, explains in
the next chapter what the scene is of which he speaks in the verses
above quoted, and whom the person is whom he calls the messenger.
“Behold,” says he, (iv, 1), “the day cometh that shall burn like an
oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stub-
Thomas Paine 190
ble; and the day cometh that shall burn them up, saith the Lord of
hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.” Verse 5: “Be-
hold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great
and dreadful day of the Lord.”
By what right, or by what imposition or ignorance Mark has
made Elijah into John the Baptist, and Malachi’s description of the
day of judgment into the birthday of Christ, I leave to the Bishop [of
Llandaff] to settle.
Mark (i,2,3), confounds two passages together, taken from dif-
ferent books of the Old Testament. The second verse, “Behold I send
my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before
thee,” is taken, as I have said before, from Malachi. The third verse,
which says, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye
the way of the Lord, make His paths straight,” is not in Malachi, but
in Isaiah, xl, 3.
Whiston says that both these verses were originally in Isaiah. If
so, it is another instance of the distorted state of the Bible, and cor-
roborates what I have said with respect to the name and description
of Cyrus being in the book of Isaiah, to which it cannot chronologi-
cally belong.
The words in Isaiah – “The voice of him that crieth in the wilder-
ness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” – are
in the present tense, and consequently not predictive. It is one of
those rhetorical figures which the Old Testament authors frequently
used. That it is merely rhetorical and metaphorical, may be seen at
the sixth verse: “And the voice said, cry; and he said what shall I cry?
All flesh is grass.”
This is evidently nothing but a figure; for flesh is not grass oth-
erwise than as a figure or metaphor, where one thing is put for an-
other. Besides which, the whole passage is too general and too
declamatory to be applied exclusively to any particular person or
purpose.
I pass on to the eleventh chapter.
In this chapter, Mark speaks of Christ riding into Jerusalem
upon a colt, but he does not make it an accomplishment of a proph-
ecy, as Matthew has done, for he says nothing about a prophecy. In-
stead of which he goes on the other tack, and in order to add new
honors to the ass, he makes it to be a miracle; for he says, verse 2, it
was a colt “whereon never man sat”; signifying thereby, that as the
ass had not been broken, he consequently was inspired into good
manners, for we do not hear that he kicked Jesus Christ off. There is
not a word about his kicking in all the four Evangelists.
I pass on from these feats of horsemanship performed upon a
jack-ass, to the 15th chapter. At the 24th verse of this chapter, Mark
speaks of parting Christ’s garments and casting lots upon them, but
he applies no prophecy to it as Matthew does. He rather speaks of it
as a thing then in practice with executioners, as it is at this day.
At the 28th verse of the same chapter, Mark speaks of Christ be-
ing crucified between two thieves; that, says he, the Scripture might
be fulfilled, “which saith, and he was numbered with the transgres-
sors.” The same might be said of the thieves.
This expression is in Isaiah liii, 12. Grotius applies it to Jere-
miah. But the case has happened so often in the world, where inno-
cent men have been numbered with transgressors, and is still
continually happening, that it is absurdity to call it a prophecy of any
particular person. All those whom the church calls martyrs were
numbered with transgressors. All the honest patriots who fell upon
the scaffold in France, in the time of Robespierre, were numbered
with transgressors; and if himself had not fallen, the same case ac-
cording to a note in his own handwriting, had befallen me; yet I sup-
pose the Bishop [of Llandaff] will not allow that Isaiah was
prophesying of Thomas Paine.
These are all the passages in Mark which have any reference to
prophecies.
Mark concludes his book by making Jesus to say to his disciples
(xvi, 16-18), “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every
creature; he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that
believeth not, shall be damned [fine popish stuff this], and these
signs shall follow them that believe: in my name they shall cast out
devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up ser-
pents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they
shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”
Thomas Paine 192
Now, the Bishop, in order to know if he has all this saving and
wonder-working faith, should try those things upon himself. He
should take a good dose of arsenic, and if he please, I will send him a
rattlesnake from America.
As for myself, as I believe in God and not at all in Jesus Christ,
nor in the books called the Scriptures, the experiment does not con-
cern me.
I pass on to the book of Luke.
THE BOOK OF LUKE

There are no passages in Luke called prophecies, excepting
those which relate to the passages I have already examined.
Luke speaks of Mary being espoused to Joseph, but he makes no
references to the passage in Isaiah, as Matthew does. He speaks also
of Jesus riding into Jerusalem upon a colt, but he says nothing about
a prophecy. He speaks of John the Baptist and refers to the passage in
Isaiah, of which I have already spoken.
At chapter xiii, 31, 32, he says, “The same day there came cer-
tain of the Pharisees, saying unto him [Jesus], Get thee out and de-
part hence, for Herod will kill thee. And he said unto them, Go ye and
tell that fox, Behold I cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and
to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.”
Matthew makes Herod to die while Christ was a child in Egypt,
and makes Joseph to return with the child on the news of Herod’s
death, who had sought to kill him. Luke makes Herod to be living,
and to seek the life of Jesus after Jesus was thirty years of age: for he
says (iii, 23), “And Jesus began to be about thirty years of age, being,
as was supposed, the son of Joseph.”
The obscurity in which the historical part of the New Testament
is involved, with respect to Herod, may afford to priests and com-
mentators a plea, which to some may appear plausible, but to none
satisfactory, that the Herod of which Matthew speaks, and the Herod
of which Luke speaks, were two different persons.
Matthew calls Herod a king; and Luke (iii, 1) calls Herod, Tet-
rarch (that is, Governor) of Galilee. But there could be no such per-
son as a King Herod, because the Jews and their country were then
under the dominion of the Roman Emperors who governed then by

tetrarchs, or governors.
Luke ii makes Jesus to be born when Cyrenius was Governor of
Syria, to which government Judea was annexed; and according to
this, Jesus was not born in the time of Herod. Luke says nothing
about Herod seeking the life of Jesus when he was born; nor of his
destroying the children under two years old; nor of Joseph fleeing
with Jesus into Egypt; nor of his returning from thence. On the con-
trary, the book of Luke speaks as if the person it calls Christ had
never been out of Judea, and that Herod sought his life after he com-
menced preaching, as is before stated.
I have already shown that Luke, in the book called the Acts of
the Apostles (which commentators ascribe to Luke), contradicts the
account in Matthew with respect to Judas and the thirty pieces of sil-
ver. Matthew says that Judas returned the money, and that the high
priests bought with it a field to bury strangers in; Luke says that Ju-
das kept the money, and bought a field with it for himself.
As it is impossible the wisdom of God should err, so it is impos-
sible those books should have been written by divine inspiration.
Our belief in God and His unerring wisdom forbids us to believe it.
As for myself, I feel religiously happy in the total disbelief of it.
There are no other passages called prophecies in Luke than
those I have spoken of. I pass on to the book of John.
THE BOOK OF JOHN

John, like Mark and Luke, is not much of a prophecy-monger.
He speaks of the ass, and the casting lots for Jesus’ clothes, and some
other trifles, of which I have already spoken.
John makes Jesus to say (v, 46), “For had ye believed Moses, ye
would have believed me, for he wrote of me.” The book of the Acts,
in speaking of Jesus, says (iii, 22), “For Moses truly said unto the fa-
thers, A prophet shall the Lord, your God, raise up unto you of your
brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he
shall say unto you.”
This passage is in Deuteronomy, xviii, 15. They apply it as a
prophecy of Jesus. What imposition! The person spoken of in Deu-
Thomas Paine 194
teronomy, and also in Numbers, where the same person is spoken of,
is Joshua, the minister of Moses, and his immediate successor, and
just such another Robespierrean character as Moses is represented to
have been. The case, as related in those books, is as follows:
Moses was grown old and near to his end, and in order to pre-
vent confusion after his death, for the Israelites had no settled system
of government, it was thought best to nominate a successor to Moses
while he was yet living. This was done, as we are told, in the follow-
ing manner:
Numbers xxvii, 12, 13 “And the Lord said unto Moses, Get thee
up into this mount Abarim, and see the land which I have given unto
the children of Israel. And when thou hast seen it thou also shalt be
gathered unto thy people, as Aaron thy brother is gathered.” Verse
15-20. “And Moses spake unto the Lord, saying, Let the Lord, the
God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, which
may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and
which may lead them out, and which may bring them in; that the con-
gregation of the Lord be not as sheep that have no Shepard. And the
Lord said unto Moses, take thee Joshua, the son of Nun, a man in
whom is the spirit, and lay thine hand upon him; and set him before
Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation; and give him a
charge in their sight. And thou shalt put some of thine honor upon
him, that all the congregation of the children of Israel may be obedi-
ent.”
Verse 22, 23. “And Moses did as the Lord commanded him; and
he took Joshua, and set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all
the congregation; and he laid hands upon him, and gave him a
charge, as the Lord commanded by the hand of Moses.”
I have nothing to do, in this place, with the truth, or the conjura-
tion here practiced, of raising up a successor to Moses like unto him-
self. The passage sufficiently proves it is Joshua, and that it is an
imposition in John to make the case into a prophecy of Jesus. But the
prophecy-mongers were so inspired with falsehood, that they never
speak truth.4
I pass to the last passage, in these fables of the Evangelists,
called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.
John, having spoken of Jesus expiring on the cross between two

thieves, says, (xix, 32, 33), “Then came the soldiers and break the
legs of the first (meaning one of the thieves) and of the other which
was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that
he was dead already, they brake not his legs.” Verse 36: “For these
things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him
shall not be broken.”
The passage here referred to is in Exodus, and has no more to do
with Jesus than with the ass he rode upon to Jerusalem; nor yet so
much, if a roasted jack-ass, like a roasted he-goat, might be eaten at a
Jewish Passover. It might be some consolation to an ass to know that
though his bones might be picked, they would not be broken. I go to
state the case.
The book of Exodus, in instituting the Jewish passover, in which
they were to eat a he-lamb, or a he-goat, says (xii, 5), “Your lamb
shall be without blemish, a male of the first year; ye shall take it from
the sheep or from the goats.” The book, after stating some ceremo-
nies to be used in killing and dressing it (for it was to be roasted, not
boiled), says (verse 43-48), “And the Lord said unto Moses and
Aaron, This is the ordinance of the passover: there shall no stranger
eat thereof; but every man’s servant that is bought for money, when
thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof. A foreigner
shall not eat thereof. In one house shall it be eaten; thou shalt not
carry forth ought of the flesh thereof abroad out of the house; neither
shall ye break a bone thereof.”
We here see that the case as it stands in Exodus is a ceremony
and not a prophecy, and totally unconnected with Jesus’ bones, or
any part of him.
John, having thus filled up the measure of apostolic fable, con-
cludes his book with something that beats all fable; for he says at the
last verse, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the
which if they could be written everyone, I suppose that even the
world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”
This is what in vulgar life is called a thumper; that is, not only a
lie, but a lie beyond the line of possibility; besides which it is an ab-
surdity, for if they should be written in the world, the world would
Thomas Paine 196
contain them. Here ends the examination of the passages called

prophecies.
I have now, reader, gone through and examined all the passages
which the four books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, quote from
the Old Testament and call them prophecies of Jesus Christ. When I
first sat down to this examination, I expected to find cause for some
censure, but little did I expect to find them so utterly destitute of
truth, and of all pretensions to it, as I have shown them to be.
The practice which the writers of these books employ is not
more false than it is absurd. They state some trifling case of the per-
son they call Jesus Christ, and then cut out a sentence from some pas-
sage of the Old Testament and call it a prophecy of that case. But
when the words thus cut out are restored to the place they are taken
from, and read with the words before and after them, they give the lie
to the New Testament. A short instance or two of this will suffice for
the whole.
They make Joseph to dream of an angel, who informs him that
Herod is dead, and tells him to come with the child out of Egypt.
They then cut out a sentence from the book of Hosea, “Out of Egypt
have I called my son,” and apply it as a prophecy in that case. The
words, “And called my Son out of Egypt,” are in the Bible.
But what of that? They are only part of a passage, and not a
whole passage, and stand immediately connected with other words
which show they refer to the children of Israel coming out of Egypt
in the time of Pharaoh, and to the idolatry they committed
afterwards.
Again, they tell us that when the soldiers came to break the legs
of the crucified persons, they found Jesus was already dead, and,
therefore, did not break his. They then, with some alteration of the
original, cut out a sentence from Exodus, “a bone of him shall not be
broken,” and apply it as a prophecy of that case.
The words “Neither shall ye break a bone thereof” (for they
have altered the text), are in the Bible. But what of that? They are, as
in the former case, only part of a passage, and not a whole passage,
and when read with the words they are immediately joined to, show
it is the bones of a he-lamb or a he-goat of which the passage speaks.
These repeated forgeries and falsifications create a well-

founded suspicion that all the cases spoken of concerning the person
called Jesus Christ are made cases, on purpose to lug in, and that
very clumsily, some broken sentences from the Old Testament, and
apply them as prophecies of those cases; and that so far from his be-
ing the Son of God, he did not exist even as a man – that he is merely
an imaginary or allegorical character, as Apollo, Hercules, Jupiter,
and all the deities of antiquity were. There is no history written at the
time Jesus Christ is said to have lived that speaks of the existence of
such a person, even as a man.
Did we find in any other book pretending to give a system of re-
ligion, the falsehoods, falsifications, contradictions, and absurdities,
which are to be met with in almost every page of the Old and New
Testament, all the priests of the present day, who supposed them-
selves capable, would triumphantly show their skill in criticism, and
cry it down as a most glaring imposition.
But since the books in question belong to their own trade and
profession, they, or at least many of them, seek to stifle every inquiry
into them and abuse those who have the honesty and the courage to
do it.
When a book, as is the case with the Old and New Testament, is
ushered into the world under the title of being the WORD OF GOD,
it ought to be examined with the utmost strictness, in order to know if
it has a well founded claim to that title or not, and whether we are or
are not imposed upon: for no poison is so dangerous as that which
poisons the physic, so no falsehood is so fatal as that which is made
an article of faith.
This examination becomes more necessary, because when the
New Testament was written, I might say invented, the art of printing
was not known, and there were no other copies of the Old Testament
than written copies. A written copy of that book would cost about as
much as six hundred common printed Bibles now cost. Conse-
quently the book was in the hands of very few persons, and these
chiefly of the Church.
This gave an opportunity to the writers of the New Testament to
make quotations from the Old Testament as they pleased, and call
them prophecies, with very little danger of being detected. Besides
Thomas Paine 198
which, the terrors and inquisitorial fury of the Church, like what they
tell us of the flaming sword that turned every way, stood sentry over
the New Testament; and time, which brings everything else to light,
has served to thicken the darkness that guards it from detection.
Were the New Testament now to appear for the first time, every
priest of the present day would examine it line by line, and compare
the detached sentences it calls prophecies with the whole passages in
the Old Testament, from whence they are taken. Why then do they
not make the same examination at this time, as they would make had
the New Testament never appeared before?
If it be proper and right to make it in one case, it is equally
proper and right to do it in the other case. Length of time can make no
difference in the right to do it at any time. But, instead of doing this,
they go on as their predecessors went on before them, to tell the peo-
ple there are prophecies of Jesus Christ, when the truth is there are
none.
They tell us that Jesus rose from the dead, and ascended into
heaven. It is very easy to say so; a great lie is as easily told as a little
one. But if he had done so, those would have been the only circum-
stances respecting him that would have differed from the common
lot of man; and, consequently, the only case that would apply exclu-
sively to him, as prophecy, would be some passage in the Old Testa-
ment that foretold such things of him.
But there is no passage in the Old Testament that speaks of a per-
son who, after being crucified, dead, and buried, should rise from the
dead, and ascend into heaven. Our prophecy-mongers supply the si-
lence the Old Testament guards upon such things, by telling us of
passages they call prophecies, and that falsely so, about Joseph’s
dream, old clothes, broken bones, and such like trifling stuff.
In writing upon this, as upon every other subject, I speak a lan-
guage full and intelligible. I deal not in hints and intimations. I have
several reasons for this: First, that I may be clearly understood. Sec-
ondly, that it may be seen I am in earnest; and thirdly, because it is an
affront to truth to treat falsehood with complaisance.
I will close the treatise with a subject I have already touched
upon in the first part of the “Age of Reason.”
The world has been amused with the term revealed religion, and
the generality of priests apply this term to the books called the Old
and New Testament. The Mahometans apply the same term to the
Koran. There is no man that believes in revealed religion stronger
than I do; but it is not the reveries of the Old and New Testament, nor
the Koran, that I dignify with that sacred title. That which is revela-
tion to me, exists in something which no human mind can invent, no
human hand can counterfeit or alter.
The Word of God is the Creation we behold; and this Word of
God revealeth to man all that is necessary for man to know of his
Creator. Do we want to contemplate His power? We see it in the im-
mensity of His creation. Do we want to contemplate His wisdom?
We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible
whole is governed.
Do we want to contemplate His munificence? We see it in the
abundance with which He fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate
His mercy? We see it in His not withholding that abundance, even
from the unthankful.
Do we want to contemplate His will, so far as it respects man?
The goodness He shows to all is a lesson for our conduct to each
other.
In fine – do we want to know what God is? Search not the book
called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, or any im-
poster invent; but the SCRIPTURE CALLED THE CREATION.
When, in the first part of the “Age of Reason,” I called the cre-
ation, the true revelation of God to man, I did not know that any other
person had expressed the same idea. But I lately met with the writ-
ings of Doctor Conyers Middleton, published the beginning of last
century, (eighteenth century, editor), in which he expresses himself
in the same manner, with respect to the creation, as I have done in the
“Age of Reason.”
He was principal librarian of the University of Cambridge, in
England, which furnished him with extensive opportunities of read-
ing, and necessarily required he should be well acquainted with the
dead as well as the living languages. He was a man of a strong origi-
Thomas Paine 200
nal mind, had the courage to think for himself, and the honesty to
speak his thoughts.
He made a journey to Rome, from whence he wrote letters to
show that the forms and ceremonies of the Romish Christian Church
were taken from the degenerate state of the heathen mythology, as it
stood in the latter times of the Greeks and Romans. He attacked with-
out ceremony the miracles which the Church pretended to perform;
and in one of his treatises, he calls the creation a revelation.
The priests of England, of that day, in order to defend their cita-
del, by first defending its out-works, attacked him for attacking the
Roman ceremonies; and one of them censures him for calling the
creation a revelation. He thus replies to him:
“One of them,” says he, “appears to be scandalized by the title of
revelation which I have given to that discovery which God made of
Himself in the visible works of his creation. Yet it is no other than
what the wise in all ages have given to it, who consider it as the most
authentic and indisputable revelation which God has ever given of
Himself, from the beginning of the world to this day.
”It was this by which the first notice of Him was revealed to the
inhabitants of the earth, and by which alone it has been kept up ever
since among the several nations of it. From this the reason of man
was enabled to trace out his nature and attributes, and, by a gradual
deduction of consequences, to learn his own nature also, with all the
duties belonging to it, which relate either to God or to his fellow-
creatures.
“This constitution of things was ordained by God, as an univer-
sal law, or rule of conduct to man; the source of all his knowledge;
the test of all truth, by which all subsequent revelations, which are
supposed to have been given by God in any other manner must be
tried, and cannot be received as divine any further than as they are
found to tally and coincide with this original standard.
”It was this divine law which I referred to in the passage above
recited [meaning the passage on which they had attacked him], being
desirous to excite the reader’s attention to it, as it would enable him
to judge more freely of the argument I was handling. For by contem-
plating this law, he would discover the genuine way which God Him-
self has marked out to us for the acquisition of true knowledge, not
from the authority or reports of our fellow-creatures, but from the in-
formation of the facts and material objects which, in His providential
distribution of worldly things, He hath presented to the perpetual ob-
servation of our senses. For as it was from these that his existence
and nature, the most important articles of all knowledge, were first
discovered to man, so that grand discovery furnished new light to-
ward tracing out the rest, and made all the inferior subjects of human
knowledge more easily discoverable to us by the same method.
“I had another view likewise in the same passage, and applica-
ble to the same end, of giving the reader a more enlarged notion of
the question in dispute, who, by turning his thoughts to reflect on the
works of the Creator, as they are manifested to us in this fabric of the
world, could not fail to observe that they are all of them great, noble,
and suitable to the majesty of His nature; carrying with them the
proofs of their origin, and showing themselves to be the production
of an all-wise and Almighty being; and by accustoming his mind to
these sublime reflections, he will be prepared to determine whether
those miraculous interpositions, so confidently affirmed to us by the
primitive fathers, can reasonably be thought to make a part in the
grand scheme of the Divine administration, or whether it be agree-
able that God, who created all things by His will, and can give what
turn to them He pleases by the same will, should, for the particular
purposes of His government and the services of the Church, descend
to the expedient of visions and revelations, granted sometimes to
boys for the instruction of the elders, and sometimes to women to
settle the fashion and length of their veils, and sometimes to pastors
of the Church to enjoin them to ordain one man a lecturer, another a
priest; or that he should scatter a profusion of miracles around the
stake of a martyr, yet all of them vain and insignificant, and without
any sensible effect, either of preserving the life or easing the suffer-
ings of the saint, or even of mortifying his persecutors, who were
always left to enjoy the full triumph of their cruelty, and the poor
martyr to expire in a miserable death.
”When these things, I say, are brought to the original test, and
compared with the genuine and indisputable works of the Creator,
how minute, how trifling, how contemptible must they be? And how
incredible must it be thought that, for the instruction of His Church,
Thomas Paine 202
God should employ ministers so precarious, unsatisfactory, and in-

adequate, as the ecstasies of women and boys, and the visions of in-
terested priests, which were derided at the very time by men of sense
to whom they were proposed.
“That this universal law [continues Middleton, meaning the law
revealed in the works of the Creation] was actually revealed to the
heathen world long before the Gospel was known, we learn from all
the principal sages of antiquity, who made it the capital subject of
their studies and writings.
“Cicero [says Middleton] has given us a short abstract of it, in a
fragment still remaining from one of his books on government,
which [says Middleton] I shall here transcribe in his own words, as
they will illustrate my sense also, in the passages that appear so dark
and dangerous to my antagonist:
“The true law [it is Cicero who speaks], is right reason, con-
formable to the nature of things, constant, eternal, diffused through
all, which calls us to duty by commanding, deters us from sin by for-
bidding; which never loses it influence with the good, nor ever pre-
serves it with the wicked. This law cannot be over-ruled by any
other, nor abrogated in whole or in part; nor can we be absolved from
it either by the senate or by the people; nor are we to seek any other
comment or interpreter of it but Himself; nor can there be one law at
Rome and another at Athens; one now and another hereafter; but the
same eternal immutable law comprehends all nations at all times, un-
der one common master and governor of all – GOD. He is the inven-
tor, propounder, enacter of this law; and whoever will not obey it
must first renounce himself, and throw off the nature of man; by do-
ing which, he will suffer the greatest punishments though he should
escape all the other torments which are commonly believed to be
prepared for the wicked.’ Here ends the quotation from Cicero.
“Our Doctors [continues Middleton] perhaps will look on this as
RANK DEISM; but let them call it what they will, I shall ever avow
and defend it as the fundamental, essential, and vital part of all true
religion.” Here ends the quotation from Middleton.
I have here given the reader two sublime extracts from men who
lived in ages of time far remote from each other, but who thought
alike. Cicero lived before the time in which they tell us Christ was
born. Middleton may be called a man of our own time, as he lived

within the same century with ourselves.
In Cicero we see that vast superiority of mind, that sublimity of
right reasoning and justness of ideas, which man acquires, not by
studying Bibles and Testaments, and the theology of schools built
thereon, but by studying the Creator in the immensity and unchange-
able order of His creation, and the immutability of His law.
“There cannot,” says Cicero “be one law now, and another
hereafter; but the same eternal immutable law comprehends all na-
tions, at all times, under one common Master and Governor of all –
GOD” But according to the doctrine of schools which priests have
set up, we see one law, called the Old Testament, given in one age of
the world, and another law, called the New Testament, given in an-
other age of the world.
As all this is contradictory to the eternal immutable nature, and
the unerring and unchangeable wisdom of God, we must be com-
pelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and the new law,
called the Old and New Testament, to be impositions, fables and
forgeries.
In Middleton, we see the manly eloquence of an enlarged mind
and the genuine sentiments of a true believer in his Creator. Instead
of reposing his faith on books, by whatever name they may be called,
whether Old Testament or New, he fixes the creation as the great
original standard by which every other thing called the word or work
of God is to be tried. In this we have an indisputable scale whereby to
measure every word or work imputed to Him. If the thing so imputed
carries not in itself the evidence of the same Almightiness of power,
of the same unerring truth and wisdom, and the same unchangeable
order in all its parts, as are visibly demonstrated to our senses, and
comprehensible by our reason, in the magnificent fabric of the uni-
verse, that word or that work is not of God. Let then the two books
called the Old and New Testament be tried by this rule, and the result
will be that the authors of them, whoever they were, will be
convicted of forgery.
The invariable principles, and unchangeable order, which regu-
late the movements of all the parts that compose the universe, dem-
Thomas Paine 204
onstrate both to our senses and our reason that its Creator is a God of
unerring truth.
But the Old Testament, beside the numberless absurd and baga-
telle stories it tells of God, represents Him as a God of deceit, a God
not to be confided in. Ezekiel makes God to say (xiv, 9), “And if the
prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I, the Lord have
deceived that prophet.” And at xx, 25, he makes God, in speaking of
the children of Israel, to say “Wherefore I gave them statutes that
were not good, and judgments by which they should not live.” This,
so far from being the Word of God, is horrid blasphemy against Him.
Reader, put thy confidence in thy God, and put no trust in the Bible.
This same Old Testament, after telling us that God created the
heavens and the earth in six days, makes the same Almighty power
and eternal wisdom employ itself in giving directions how a priest’s
garments should be cut, and what sort of stuff they should be made
of, and what their offerings should be, gold and silver, and brass and
blue, and purple and scarlet, and fine linen and goat’s hair, and rams’
skins dyed red, and badger skins, etc. (xxv, 3); and in one of the pre-
tended prophecies I have just examined, God is made to give direc-
tions how they should kill, cook and eat a he-lamb or a he-goat.
And Ezekiel (iv), to fill up the measure of abominable absurdity,
makes God to order him to take wheat and barley, and beans and
lentiles, and millet and fitches, and make a loaf or a cake thereof,
and bake it with human dung and eat it; but as Ezekiel complained
that this mess was too strong for his stomach, the matter was com-
promised from man’s dung to cow-dung. Compare all this ribaldry,
blasphemously called the Word of God, with the Almighty power
that created the universe, and whose eternal wisdom directs and gov-
erns all its mighty movements, and we shall be at a loss to find a
name sufficiently contemptible for it.
In the promises which the Old Testament pretends that God
made to His people, the same derogatory ideas of Him prevail. It
makes God to promise Abraham that his seed should be like the stars
in heaven and the sand on the sea shore for multitude, and that He
would give them the land of Canaan as their inheritance forever.
But observe, reader, how the performance of this promise was to
begin, and then ask thine own reason, if the wisdom of God, whose
power is equal to His will, could, consistently with that power and
that wisdom, make such a promise.
The performance of the promise was to begin, according to that
book, by four hundred years of bondage and affliction. Genesis xv,
13, “And he said unto Abraham, Know of a surety that thy seed shall
be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and
they shall afflict them four hundred years.”
This promise then to Abraham and his seed forever, to inherit
the land of Canaan, had it been a fact instead of a fable, was to oper-
ate, in the commencement of it, as a curse upon all the people and
their children, and their children’s children, for four hundred years.
But the case is, the book of Genesis was written after the bond-
age in Egypt had taken place; and in order to get rid of the disgrace of
the Lord’s chosen people, as they called themselves, being in bond-
age to the Gentiles, they make God to be the author of it, and annex it
as a condition to a pretended promise; as if God, in making that
promise, had exceeded His power in performing it, and conse-
quently, His wisdom in making it, and was obliged to compromise
with them for one-half, and with the Egyptians, to whom they were
to be in bondage, for the other half.
Without degrading my own reason by bringing those wretched
and contemptible tales into a comparative view with the Almighty
power and eternal wisdom, which the Creator hath demonstrated to
our senses in the creation of the universe, I shall confine myself to
say, that if we compare them with the divine and forcible sentiments
of Cicero, the result will be that the human mind has degenerated by
believing them. Man, in a state of groveling superstition from which
he has not courage to rise, loses the energy of his mental powers.
I will not tire the reader with more observations on the Old Tes-
tament.
As to the New Testament, if it be brought and tried by that stan-
dard which, as Middleton wisely says, God has revealed to our
senses, of His Almighty power and wisdom in the creation and gov-
ernment of the visible universe, it will be found equally as false, pal-
try, and absurd, as the Old.
Thomas Paine 206
Without entering, in this place, into any other argument, that the
story of Christ is of human invention and not of divine origin, I will
confine myself to show that it is derogatory to God by the contriv-
ance of it; becausethe means it supposes God to use, are not adequate
to the end to be obtained; and, therefore, are derogatory to the Al-
mightiness of His power, and the eternity of His wisdom.
The New Testament supposes that God sent His Son upon earth
to make a new covenant with man, which the Church calls the cove-
nant of grace; and to instruct mankind in a new doctrine, which it
calls Faith, meaning thereby, not faith in God, for Cicero and all true
Deists always had and always will have this, but faith in the person
called Jesus Christ; and that whoever had not this faith should, to use
the words of the New Testament, be DAMNED.
Now, if this were a fact, it is consistent with that attribute of God
called His goodness, that no time should be lost in letting poor unfor-
tunate man know it; and as that goodness was united to Almighty
power, and that power to Almighty wisdom, all the means existed in
the hand of the Creator to make it known immediately over the whole
earth, in a manner suitable to the Almightiness of His divine nature,
and with evidence that would not leave man in doubt; for it is always
incumbent upon us, in all cases, to believe that the Almighty always
acts, not by imperfect means as imperfect man acts, but consistently
with His Almightiness. It is this only that can become the infallible
criterion by which we can possibly distinguish the works of God
from the works of man.
Observe now, reader, how the comparison between this sup-
posed mission of Christ, on the belief or disbelief of which they say
man was to be saved or damned – observe, I say, how the comparison
between this, and the Almighty power and wisdom of God demon-
strated to our senses in the visible creation, goes on.
The Old Testament tells us that God created the heavens and the
earth, and everything therein, in six days. The term six days is ridicu-
lous enough when applied to God; but leaving out that absurdity, it
contains the idea of Almighty power acting unitedly with Almighty
wisdom, to produce an immense work, that of the creation of the uni-
verse and everything therein, in a short time.
Now as the eternal salvation of man is of much greater impor-

tance than his creation, and as that salvation depends, and the New
Testament tells us, on man’s knowledge of and belief in the person
called Jesus Christ, it necessarily follows from our belief in the
goodness and justice of God, and our knowledge of His Almighty
power and wisdom, as demonstrated in the creation, that ALL THIS,
if true, would be made known to all parts of the world, in as little time
at least, as was employed in making the world.
To suppose the Almighty would pay greater regard and attention
to the creation and organization of inanimate matter, than he would
to the salvation of innumerable millions of souls, which Himself had
created, “as the image of Himself,” is to offer an insult to His
goodness and His justice.
Now observe, reader, how the promulgation of this pretended
salvation by a knowledge of, and a belief in Jesus Christ went on,
compared with the work of creation. In the first place, it took longer
time to make the child than to make the world, for nine months were
passed away and totally lost in a state of pregnancy; which is more
than forty times longer time than God employed in making the
world, according to the Bible account.
Secondly, several years of Christ’s life were lost in a state of hu-
man infancy. But the universe was in maturity the moment it existed.
Thirdly, Christ, as Luke asserts, was thirty years old before he began
to preach what they call his mission. Millions of souls died in the
meantime without knowing it.
Fourthly, it was above three hundred years from that time before
the book called the New Testament was compiled into a written copy,
before which time there was no such book. Fifthly, it was above a
thousand years after that before it could be circulated; because nei-
ther Jesus nor his apostles had knowledge of, or were inspired with,
the art of printing; and, consequently, as the means for making it uni-
versally known did not exist, the means were not equal to the end,
and therefore it is not the work of God.
I will here subjoin the nineteenth Psalm, which is truly deistical,
to show how universally and instantaneously the works of God make
themselves known, compared with this pretended salvation by Jesus
Christ:
Thomas Paine 208
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament

showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night
unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language
where their voice is not heard.
”Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to
the end of the world. In them hath he set a chamber for the sun, which
is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a
strong man to run a race.
“His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit
unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.”
Now, had the news of salvation by Jesus Christ been inscribed
on the face of the sun and the moon, in characters that all nations
would have understood, the whole earth had known it in twenty-four
hours, and all nations would have believed it; whereas, though it is
now almost two thousand years since, as they tell us, Christ came
upon earth, not a twentieth part of the people of the earth know any-
thing of it, and among those who do, the wiser part do not believe it.
I have now, reader, gone through all the passages called prophe-
cies of Jesus Christ, and shown there is no such thing.
I have examined the story told of Jesus Christ, and compared the
several circumstances of it with that revelation which, as Middleton
wisely says, God has made to us of His power and wisdom in the
structure ofthe universe, and by which everything ascribed to Him is
to be tried.
The result is, that the story of Christ has not one trait, either in its
character or in the means employed, that bears the least resemblance
to the power and wisdom of God, as demonstrated in the creation of
the universe. All the means are human means, slow, uncertain and in-
adequate to the accomplishment of the end proposed; and therefore
the whole is a fabulous invention, and undeserving of credit.
The priests of the present day profess to believe it. They gain
their living by it, and they exclaim against something they call infi-
delity. I will define what it is. HE THAT BELIEVES IN THE
STORY OF CHRIST IS AN INFIDEL TO GOD.
AUTHOR’S APPENDIX
CONTRADICTORY DOCTRINES BETWEEN
MATTHEW AND MARK
n the New Testament (Mark xvi, 16), it is said “He that believ-
I eth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not
shall be damned.” This is making salvation, or, in other words, the
happiness of man after this life, to depend entirely on believing, or
on what Christians call faith.
But The Gospel according to Matthew makes Jesus Christ

preach a direct contrary doctrine to The Gospel according to Mark;
for it makes salvation, or the future happiness of man, to depend en-
tirely on good works; and those good works are not works done to
God, for He needs them not, but good works done to man.
The passage referred to in Matthew is the account there given of

what is called the last day, or the day of judgment, where the whole
world is represented to be divided into two parts, the righteous and
the unrighteous, metaphorically called the sheep and the goats. To
the one part called the righteous, or the sheep, it says, “Come, ye
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
beginning of the world: for I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat;
I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me
in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in
prison, and ye came unto me.
“Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw
we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
When saw thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed
thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you,
Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my breth-
ren, ye have done it unto me.”
Thomas Paine 210
Here is nothing about believing in Christ – nothing about that

phantom of the imagination called Faith. The works here spoken of
are works of humanity and benevolence, or, in other words, an en-
deavor to make God’s creation happy.
Here is nothing about preaching and making long prayers, as if
God must be dictated to by man; nor about building churches and
meetings, nor hiring priests to pray and preach in them. Here is noth-
ing about predestination, that lust which some men have for damning
one another.
Here is nothing about baptism, whether by sprinkling or plung-
ing, nor about any of those ceremonies for which the Christian
Church has been fighting, persecuting, and burning each other ever
since the Christian Church began.
If it be asked, why do not priests preach the doctrine contained
in this chapter, the answer is easy: they are not fond of practicing it
themselves. It does not answer for their trade. They had rather get
than give. Charity with them begins and ends at home.
Had it been said, Come ye blessed, ye have been liberal in pay-
ing the preachers of the world, ye have contributed largely towards
building churches and meeting-houses, there is not a hired priest in
Christendom but would have thundered it continually in the ears of
his congregation. But as it is altogether on good works done to men,
the priests pass over it in silence, and they will abuse me for bringing
it into notice.
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS
Of the Religion of Deism

Compared with the
Christian Religion
very person, of whatever religious denomination he may be,
E is a DEIST in the first article of his Creed. Deism, from the
Latin word Deus, God, is the belief of a God, and this belief is the
first article of every man’s creed.
It is on this article, universally consented to by all mankind, that
the Deist builds his church, and here he rests. Whenever we step
aside from this article, by mixing it with articles of human invention,
we wander into a labyrinth of uncertainty and fable, and become ex-
posed to every kind of imposition by pretenders to revelation.
The Persian shows the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster, the lawgiver
of Persia, and calls it the divine law; the Bramin shows the Shaster,
revealed, he says, by God to Brama, and given to him out of a cloud;
the Jew shows what he calls the law of Moses, given, he says, by
God, on the Mount Sinai; the Christian shows a collection of books
and epistles, written by nobody knows who, and called the New Tes-
tament; and the Mahometan shows the Koran, given, he says, by God
to Mahomet: each of these calls itself revealed religion, and the only
true Word of God, and this the followers of each profess to believe
from the habit of education, and each believes the others are imposed
upon.
But when the divine gift of reason begins to expand itself in the
mind and calls man to reflection, he then reads and contemplates
God and His works, and not in the books pretending to be revelation.
The creation is the Bible of the true believer in God. Everything in
this vast volume inspires him with sublime ideas of the Creator. The
little and paltry, and often obscene, tales of the Bible sink into
wretchedness when put in comparison with this mighty work.
Thomas Paine 212
The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles
to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the cre-
ation itself, and his own existence?
There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is
not to be found in any other system of religion. All other systems
have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repug-
nant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to
force himself to believe them.
But in Deism our reason and our belief become happily united.
The wonderful structure of the universe, and everything we behold
in the system of the creation, prove to us, far better than books can
do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim His
attributes.
It is by the exercise of our reason that we are enabled to contem-
plate God in His works, and imitate Him in His ways. When we see
His care and goodness extended over all His creatures, it teaches us
our duty toward each other, while it calls forth our gratitude to Him.
It is by forgetting God in His works, and running after the books of
pretended revelation, that man has wandered from the straight path
of duty and happiness, and become by turns the victim of doubt and
the dupe of delusion.
Except in the first article in the Christian creed, that of believing
in God, there is not an article in it but fills the mind with doubt as to
the truth of it, the instant man begins to think. Now every article in a
creed that is necessary to the happiness and salvation of man, ought
to be as evident to the reason and comprehension of man as the first
article is, for God has not given us reason for the purpose of con-
founding us, but that we should use it for our own happiness and His
glory.
The truth of the first article is proved by God Himself, and is
universal; for the creation is of itself demonstration of the existence
of a Creator. But the second article, that of God’s begetting a son, is
not proved in like manner, and stands on no other authority than that
of a tale.
Certain books in what is called the New Testament tell us that
Joseph dreamed that the angel told him so, (Matthew i, 20): “And be-
hold the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, in a dream, saying, Jo-
seph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for
that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.”
The evidence upon this article bears no comparison with the evi-
dence upon the first article, and therefore is not entitled to the same
credit, and ought not to be made an article in a creed, because the evi-
dence of it is defective, and what evidence there is, is doubtful and
suspicious. We do not believe the first article on the authority of
books, whether called Bibles or Korans, nor yet on the visionary au-
thority of dreams, but on the authority of God’s own visible works in
the creation.
The nations who never heard of such books, nor of such people
as Jews, Christians, or Mahometans, believe the existence of a God
as fully as we do, because it is self-evident. The work of man’s hands
is a proof of the existence of man as fully as his personal appearance
would be.
When we see a watch, we have as positive evidence of the exis-
tence of a watchmaker, as if we saw him; and in like manner the cre-
ation is evidence to our reason and our senses of the existence of a
Creator. But there is nothing in the works of God that is evidence that
He begat a son, nor anything in the system of creation that corrobo-
rates such an idea, and, therefore, we are not authorized in believing
it.
What truth there may be in the story that Mary, before she was
married to Joseph, was kept by one of the Roman soldiers, and was
with child by him, I leave to be settled between the Jews and Chris-
tians. The story however has probability on its side, for her husband
Joseph suspected and was jealous of her, and was going to put her
away. “Joseph, her husband, being a just man, and not willing to
make her a public example, was going to put her away, privately.”
(Matt. i, 19).
I have already said that “whenever we step aside from the first
article (that of believing in God), we wander into a labyrinth of un-
certainty,” and here is evidence of the justness of the remark, for it is
impossible for us to decide who was Jesus Christ’s father.
Thomas Paine 214
But presumption can assume anything, and therefore it makes

Joseph’s dream to be of equal authority with the existence of God,
and to help it on calls it revelation. It is impossible for the mind of
man in its serious moments, however it may have been entangled by
education, or beset by priestcraft, not to stand still and doubt upon
the truth of this article and of its creed.
But this is not all. The second article of the Christian creed hav-
ing brought the son of Mary into the world (and this Mary, according
to the chronological tables, was a girl of only fifteen years of age
when this son was born), the next article goes on to account for his
being begotten, which was, that when he grew a man he should be
put to death, to expiate, they say, the sin that Adam brought into the
world by eating an apple or some kind of forbidden fruit.
But though this is the creed of the Church of Rome, from

whence the Protestants borrowed it, it is a creed which that Church
has manufactured of itself, for it is not contained in nor derived from,
the book called the New Testament.
The four books called the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke

and John, which give, or pretend to give, the birth, sayings, life,
preaching, and death of Jesus Christ, make no mention of what is
called the fall of man; nor is the name of Adam to be found in any of
those books, which it certainly would be if the writers of them be-
lieved that Jesus was begotten, born, and died for the purpose of re-
deeming mankind from the sin which Adam had brought into the
world. Jesus never speaks of Adam himself, of the garden of Eden,
nor of what is called the fall of man.
But the Church of Rome having set up its new religion, which it
called Christianity, invented the creed which it named the Apostles’s
Creed, in which it calls Jesus the only son of God, conceived by the
Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary; things of which it is impos-
sible that man or woman can have any idea, and consequently no be-
lief but in words; and for which there is no authority but the idle story
of Joseph’s dream in the first chapter of Matthew, which any design-
ing imposter or foolish fanatic might make.
It then manufactured the allegories in the book of Genesis into

fact, and the allegorical tree of life and the tree of knowledge into
real trees, contrary to the belief of the first Christians, and for which
there is not the least authority in any of the books of the New Testa-
ment; for in none of them is there any mention made of such place as
the Garden of Eden, nor of anything that is said to have happened
there.
But the Church of Rome could not erect the person called Jesus
into a Savior of the world without making the allegories in the book
of Genesis into fact, though the New Testament, as before observed,
gives no authority for it. All at once the allegorical tree of knowledge
became, according to the Church, a real tree, the fruit of it real fruit,
and the eating of it sinful.
As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because
priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and igno-
rance, it was consistent with its policy to make the acquisition of
knowledge a real sin.
The Church of Rome having done this, it then brings forward Je-
sus the son of Mary as suffering death to redeem mankind from sin,
which Adam, it says, had brought into the world by eating the fruit of
the tree of knowledge. But as it is impossible for reason to believe
such a story, because it can see no reason for it, nor have any evi-
dence of it, the Church then tells us we must not regard our reason,
but must believe, as it were, and that through thick and thin, as if God
had given man reason like a plaything, or a rattle, on purpose to make
fun of him.
Reason is the forbidden tree of priestcraft, and may serve to ex-
plain the allegory of the forbidden tree of knowledge, for we may
reasonably suppose the allegory had some meaning and application
at the time it was invented. It was the practice of the Eastern nations
to convey their meaning by allegory, and relate it in the manner of
fact. Jesus followed the same method, yet nobody ever supposed the
allegory or parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the Prodigal Son,
the ten Virgins, etc., were facts.
Why then should the tree of knowledge, which is far more ro-
mantic in idea than the parables in the New Testament are, be sup-
Thomas Paine 216
posed to be a real tree?* The answer to this is, because the Church
could not make its new-fangled system, which it called Christianity,
hold together without it. To have made Christ to die on account of an
allegorical tree would have been too barefaced a fable.
But the account, as it is given of Jesus in the New Testament,
even visionary as it is, does not support the creed of the Church that
he died for the redemption of the world. According to that account he
was crucified and buried on the Friday, and rose again in good health
on the Sunday morning, for we do not hear that he was sick. This
cannot be called dying, and is rather making fun of death than
suffering it.
There are thousands of men and women also, who if they could
know they should come back again in good health in about thirty-six
hours, would prefer such kind of death for the sake of the experi-
ment, and to know what the other side of the grave was. Why then
should that which would be only a voyage of curious amusement to
us, be magnified into merit and suffering in him? If a God, he could
not suffer death, for immortality cannot die, and as a man his death
could be no more than the death of any other person.
The belief of the redemption of Jesus Christ is altogether an in-
vention of the Church of Rome, not the doctrine of the New Testa-
ment. What the writers of the New Testament attempted to prove by
the story of Jesus is the resurrection of the same body from the grave,
which was the belief of the Pharisees, in opposition to the Sadducees
(a sect of Jews) who denied it.
Paul, who was brought up a Pharisee, labors hard at this for it
was the creed of his own Pharisaical Church: I Corinthians xv is full
of supposed cases and assertions about the resurrection of the same
body, but there is not a word in it about redemption. This chapter
makes part of the funeral service of the Episcopal Church.
The dogma of the redemption is the fable of priestcraft invented
since the time the New Testament was compiled, and the agreeable
* The remark of the Emperor Julian, on the story of the Tree of Knowl-
edge is worth observing. “If,” said he, “there ever had been, or could be,
a Tree of Knowledge, instead of God forbidding man to eat thereof, it
would be that of which He would order him to eat the most.”
delusion of it suited with the depravity of immoral livers. When men

are taught to ascribe all their crimes and vices to the temptations of
the devil, and to believe that Jesus, by his death, rubs all off, and pays
their passage to heaven gratis, they become as careless in morals as a
spendthrift would be of money, were he told that his father had en-
gaged to pay off all his scores.
It is a doctrine not only dangerous to morals in this world, but to

our happiness in the next world, because it holds out such a cheap,
easy, and lazy way of getting to heaven, as has a tendency to induce
men to hug the delusion of it to their own injury.
But there are times when men have serious thoughts, and it is at
such times, when they begin to think, that they begin to doubt the
truth of the Christian religion; and well they may, for it is too fanciful
and too full of conjecture, inconsistency, improbability and irratio-
nality, to afford consolation to the thoughtful man. His reason revolts
against his creed. He sees that none of its articles are proved, or can
be proved.
He may believe that such a person as is called Jesus (for Christ

was not his name) was born and grew to be a man, because it is no
more than a natural and probable case. But who is to prove he is the
son of God, that he was begotten by the Holy Ghost? Of these things
there can be no proof; and that which admits not of proof, and is
against the laws of probability and the order of nature, which God
Himself has established, is not an object for belief. God has not given
man reason to embarrass him, but to prevent his being imposed upon.
He may believe that Jesus was crucified, because many others

were crucified, but who is to prove he was crucified for the sins of the
world? This article has no evidence, not even in the New Testament;
and if it had, where is the proof that the New Testament, in relating
things neither probable nor provable, is to be believed as true?
When an article in a creed does not admit of proof nor of proba-

bility, the salvo is to call it revelation; but this is only putting one dif-
ficulty in the place of another, for it is as impossible to prove a thing
to be revelation as it is to prove that Mary was gotten with child by
the Holy Ghost.
Thomas Paine 218
Here it is that the religion of Deism is superior to the Christian

Religion. It is free from all those invented and torturing articles that
shock our reason or injure our humanity, and with which the Chris-
tian religion abounds. Its creed is pure, and sublimely simple. It be-
lieves in God, and there it rests.
It honors reason as the choicest gift of God to man, and the fac-
ulty by which he is enabled to contemplate the power, wisdom and
goodness of the Creator displayed in the creation; and reposing itself
on His protection, both here and hereafter, it avoids all presumptuous
beliefs, and rejects, as the fabulous inventions of men, all books
pretending to revelation.
Biblical Blasphemy
he Church tells us that the books of the Old and New Testa-
T ment are divine revelation, and without this revelation we
could not have true ideas of God.
The Deist, on the contrary, says that those books are not divine
revelation; and that were it not for the light of reason and the religion
of Deism, those books, instead of teaching us true ideas of God,
would teach us not only false but blasphemous ideas of Him.
Deism teaches us that God is a God of truth and justice. Does the
Bible teach the same doctrine? It does not.
The Bible says (Jeremiah xx, 7) that God is a deceiver. “O Lord
(says Jeremiah) thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived. Thou art
stronger than I, and hast prevailed.”
Jeremiah not only upbraids God with deceiving him, but, in iv,
10, he upbraids God with deceiving the people of Jerusalem. “Ah!
Lord God (says he), surely thou hast greatly deceived this people and
Jerusalem, saying, ye shall have peace, whereas the sword reacheth
unto the soul.”
In xv, 18, the Bible becomes more impudent, and calls God in
plain language, a liar. “Wilt thou (says Jeremiah to God) be alto-
gether unto me as a liar and as waters that fail?”
Ezekiel xiv, 9, makes God to say – “If the prophet be deceived
when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet.”
All this is downright blasphemy.
The prophet Micaiah, as he is called, II Chron. xviii, 18-21, tells
another blasphemous story of God. “I saw,” says he, “the Lord sitting
on His throne, and all the hosts of Heaven standing on His right hand
and on His left. And the Lord said, who shall entice Ahab, King of Is-
rael, to go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? And one spoke after this
manner, and another after that manner.
Thomas Paine 220
“Then there came out a spirit [Micaiah does not tell us where he
came from] and stood before the Lord [what an impudent fellow this
spirit was] and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him,
wherewith? And he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit in the
mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him,
and thou shalt also prevail; go out, and do even so.”
We often hear of a gang of thieves plotting to rob and murder a
man, and laying a plan to entice him out that they may execute their
design, and we always feel shocked at the wickedness of such
wretches; but what must we think of a book that describes the Al-
mighty acting in the same manner, and laying plans in heaven to en-
trap and ruin mankind? Our ideas of His justice and goodness forbid
us to believe such stories, and therefore we say that a lying spirit has
been in the mouth of the writers of the books of the Bible.
The Tower of Babel
he story of the tower of Babel is told in Genesis xi. It begins
T thus: “And the whole earth [it was but a very little part of it
they knew] was of one language and of one speech. And it came to
pass as they journeyed from the East, that they found a plain in the
land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. And they said one to another,
Go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly, and they had
brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.
”And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose
top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be
scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord
came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men
builded.
“And the Lord said, Behold the people is one, and they have all
one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be re-
strained from them which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go
down and there confound their language, that they may not under-
stand one another’s speech.
”So [that is, by that means] the Lord scattered them abroad from
thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left off building the
city.”
This is the story, and a very foolish, inconsistent story it is. In the
first place, the familiar and irreverent manner in which the Almighty
is spoken of in this chapter is offensive to a serious mind.
As to the project of building a tower whose top should reach to
heaven, there never could be a people so foolish as to have such a no-
tion; but to represent the Almighty as jealous of the attempt, as the
writer of the story has done, is adding profanation to folly. “Go to,”
say the builders, “let us build us a tower whose top shall reach to
heaven.” “Go to,” says God, “let us go down and confound their lan-
guage.”
Thomas Paine 222
This quaintness is indecent, and the reason given for is worse,

for, “now nothing will be restrained from them which they have
imagined to do.” This is representing the Almighty as jealous of their
getting into heaven. The story is too ridiculous, even as a fable, to ac-
count for the diversity of languages in the world, for which it seems
to have been intended.
As to the project of confounding their language for the purpose
of making them separate, it is altogether inconsistent; because in-
stead of producing this effect, it would, by increasing their difficul-
ties, render them more necessary to each other, and cause them to
keep together. Where could they go to better themselves?
Another observation upon this story is, the inconsistency of it
with respect to the opinion that the Bible is the Word of God given
for the information of mankind; for nothing could so effectually pre-
vent such a word from being known by mankind as confounding
their language. The people, who after this spoke different languages,
could no more understand such a Word generally, than the builders of
Babel could understand on another. It would have been necessary,
therefore, had such Word ever been given or intended to be given,
that the whole earth should be, as they say it was at first, of one lan-
guage and of one speech, and that it should never have been con-
founded.
The case, however, is, that the Bible will not bear examination
in any part of it, which it would do if it was the Word of God. Those
who most believe it are those who know least about it, and priests al-
ways take care to keep the inconsistent and contradictory parts out of
sight.
A Letter to a Friend Regarding
The Age of Reason
Paris, May 12, 1797
n your letter of the twentieth of March, you give me several

I quotations from the Bible, which you call the Word of God, to
show me that my opinions on religion are wrong, and I could give
you as many, from the same book to show that yours are not right;
consequently, then, the Bible decides nothing, because it decides any
way, and every way, one chooses to make it.
But by what authority do you call the Bible the Word of God?
for this is the first point to be settled. It is not your calling it so that
makes it so, any more than the Mahometans calling the Koran the
Word of God makes the Koran to be so. The Popish Councils of Nice
and Laodicea, about 350 years after the time the person called Jesus
Christ is said to have lived, voted the books that now compose what
is called the New Testament to be the Word of God. This was done by
yeas and nays, as we now vote a law.
The Pharisees of the second temple, after the Jews returned from
captivity in Babylon, did the same by the books that now compose
the Old Testament, and this is all the authority there is, which to me is
no authority at all. I am as capable of judging for myself as they
were, and I think more so, because, as they made a living by their re-
ligion, they had a self-interest in the vote they gave.
You may have an opinion that a man is inspired, but you cannot
prove it, nor can you have any proof of it yourself, because you can-
not see into his mind in order to know how he comes by his thoughts;
and the same is the case with the word revelation. There can be no
evidence of such a thing, for you can no more prove revelation than
you can prove what another man dreams of, neither can he prove it
himself.
Thomas Paine 224
It is often said in the Bible that God spake unto Moses, but how
do you know that God spake unto Moses? Because, you will say, the
Bible says so. The Koran says, that God spake unto Mahomet, do
you believe that too? No.
Why not? Because, you will say, you do not believe it; and so
because you do, and because you don’t is all the reason you can give
for believing or disbelieving except that you will say that Mahomet
was an impostor. And how do you know Moses was not an impostor?
For my own part, I believe that all are impostors who pretend to
hold verbal communication with the Deity. It is the way by which the
world has been imposed upon; but if you think otherwise you have
the same right to your opinion that I have to mine, and must answer
for it in the same manner. But all this does not settle the point,
whether the Bible be the Word of God, or not. It is therefore neces-
sary to go a step further. The case then is: –
You form your opinion of God from the account given of Him in
the Bible; and I form my opinion of the Bible from the wisdom and
goodness of God manifested in the structure of the universe, and in
all works of creation. The result in these two cases will be, that you,
by taking the Bible for your standard, will have a bad opinion of
God; and I, by taking God for my standard, shall have a bad opinion
of the Bible.
The Bible represents God to be a changeable, passionate, vin-
dictive being; making a world and then drowning it, afterwards re-
penting of what he had done, and promising not to do so again.
Setting one nation to cut the throats of another, and stopping the
course of the sun till the butchery should be done. But the works of
God in the creation preach to us another doctrine. In that vast volume
we see nothing to give us the idea of a changeable, passionate, vin-
dictive God; everything we there behold impresses us with a con-
trary idea – that of unchangeableness and of eternal order, harmony,
and goodness.
The sun and the seasons return at their appointed time, and ev-
erything in the creation claims that God is unchangeable. Now,
which am I to believe, a book that any impostor might make and call
the Word of God, or the creation itself which none but an Almighty
Power could make? For the Bible says one thing, and the creation
says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a
mortal, and the creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a
God.
It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and
murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man. That blood-
thirsty man, called the prophet Samuel, makes God to say, (I Sam. xv.
3) `Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have,
and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suck-
ling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.’
That Samuel or some other impostor might say this, is what, at
this distance of time, can neither be proved nor disproved, but in my
opinion it is blasphemy to say, or to believe, that God said it. All our
ideas of the justice and goodness of God revolt at the impious cruelty
of the Bible. It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the
name of God, that the Bible describes.
What makes this pretended order to destroy the Amalekites ap-
pear the worse, is the reason given for it. The Amalekites, four hun-
dred years before, according to the account in Exodus xvii. (but
which has the appearance of fable from the magical account it gives
of Moses holding up his hands), had opposed the Israelites coming
into their country, and this the Amalekites had a right to do, because
the Israelites were the invaders, as the Spaniards were the invaders of
Mexico. This opposition by the Amalekites, at that time, is given as a
reason, that the men, women, infants and sucklings, sheep and oxen,
camels and asses, that were born four hundred years afterward,
should be put to death; and to complete the horror, Samuel hewed
Agag, the chief of the Amalekites, in pieces, as you would hew a
stick of wood. I will bestow a few observations on this case.
In the first place, nobody knows who the author, or writer, of the
book of Samuel was, and, therefore, the fact itself has no other proof
than anonymous or hearsay evidence, which is no evidence at all. In
the second place, this anonymous book says, that this slaughter was
done by the express command of God: but all our ideas of the justice
and goodness of God give the lie to the book, and as I never will be-
lieve any book that ascribes cruelty and injustice to God, I therefore
reject the Bible as unworthy of credit.
Thomas Paine 226
As I have now given you my reasons for believing that the Bible
is not the Word of God, that it is a falsehood, I have a right to ask you
your reasons for believing the contrary; but I know you can give me
none, except that you were educated to believe the Bible; and as the
Turks give the same reason for believing the Koran, it is evident that
education makes all the difference, and that reason and truth have
nothing to do in the case.
You believe in the Bible from the accident of birth, and the
Turks believe in the Koran from the same accident, and each calls the
other infidel. But leaving the prejudice of education out of the case,
the unprejudiced truth is, that all are infidels who believe falsely of
God, whether they draw their creed from the Bible, or from the Ko-
ran, from the Old Testament, or from the New.
When you have examined the Bible with the attention that I
have done (for I do not think you know much about it), and permit
yourself to have just ideas of God, you will most probably believe as
I do. But I wish you to know that this answer to your letter is not writ-
ten for the purpose of changing your opinion. It is written to satisfy
you, and some other friends whom I esteem, that my disbelief of the
Bible is founded on a pure and religious belief in God; for in my
opinion the Bible is a gross libel against the justice and goodness of
God, in almost every part of it.
Thomas Paine’s Ideas
Regarding Death
A Letter to Andrew Dean From Thomas Paine
received your friendly letter, for which I am obliged to you. It

I is three weeks ago today (Sunday, August fifteenth), that I
was struck with a fit of apoplexy, that deprived me of all sense and
motion. I had neither pulse nor breathing, and the people about me
supposed me dead. I had felt exceedingly well that day, and had just
taken a slice of bread and butter for supper, and was going to bed.
The fit took me on the stairs, as suddenly as if I had been shot
through the head; and I got so very much hurt by the fall, that I have
not been able to get in and out of bed since that day, otherwise than
being lifted out in a blanket, by two persons; yet all this while my
mental faculties have remained as perfect a I ever enjoyed them.
I consider the scene I have passed through as an experiment on
dying, and I find that death has no terrors for me. As to the people
called Christians, they have no evidence that their religion is true.
There is no more proof that the Bible is the Word of God, than that
the Koran of Mahomet is the Word of God. It is education makes all
the difference. Man, before he begins to think for himself, is as much
the child of habits in Creeds as he is in plowing and sowing. Yet
creeds, like opinions, prove nothing.
Where is the evidence that the person called Jesus Christ is the
begotten Son of God? The case admits not of evidence either to our
senses or our mental faculties: neither has God given to man any tal-
ent by which such a thing is comprehensible.
It cannot therefore be an object for faith to act upon, for faith is
nothing more than an assent the mind gives to something it sees
cause to believe is fact. But priests, preachers, and fanatics, put
Thomas Paine 228
imagination in the place of faith, and it is the nature of the imagina-

tion to believe without evidence.
If Joseph the carpenter dreamed (as the book of Matthew (i) says
he did), that his betrothed wife, Mary, was with child by the Holy
Ghost, and that an angel told him so, I am not obliged to put faith in
his dreams; nor do I put any, for I put no faith in my own dreams, and
I should be weak and foolish indeed to put faith in the dreams of oth-
ers.
The Christian religion is derogatory to the Creator in all its arti-
cles. It puts the Creator in an inferior point of view, and places the
Christian devil above Him. It is he, according to the absurd story in
Genesis, that outwits the Creator in the Garden of Eden, and steals
from Him His favorite creature, man, and at last obliges Him to beget
a son, and put that son to death, to get man back again; and this the
priests of the Christian religion call redemption.
Christian authors exclaim against the practice of offering up hu-
man sacrifices, which, they say, is done in some countries; and those
authors make those exclamations without ever reflecting that their
own doctrine of salvation is founded on a human sacrifice. They are
saved, they say, by the blood of Christ. The Christian religion begins
with a dream and ends with a murder.
As I am now well enough to sit up some hours in the day, though
not well enough to get up without help, I employ myself as I have al-
ways done, in endeavoring to bring man to the right use of the reason
that God has given him, and to direct his mind immediately to his
Creator, and not to fanciful secondary beings called mediators, as if
God was superannuated or ferocious.
As to the book called the Bible, it is blasphemy to call it the
Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of
bad times and bad men. There are but a few good characters in the
whole book. The fable of Christ and his twelve apostles, which is a
parody on the sun and the twelve signs of the zodiac, copied from the
ancient religions of the eastern world, is the least hurtful part.
Everything told of Christ has reference to the sun. His reported
resurrection is at sunrise, and that on the first day of the week; that is,
on the day anciently dedicated to the sun, and from thence called
Sunday – in Latin Dies Solis, the day of the sun; and the next day,
Monday, is Moon-day. But there is no room in a letter to explain
these things.
While man keeps to the belief of one God, his reason unites with
his creed. He is not shocked with contradictions and horrid stories.
His bible is the heavens and the earth. He beholds his Creator in all
His works, and everything he beholds inspires him with reverence
and gratitude. From the goodness of God to all, he learns his duty to
his fellow-man, and stands self-reproved when he transgresses it.
Such a man is no persecutor.
But when he multiplies his creed with imaginary things, of
which he can have neither evidence nor conception, such as the tale
of the Garden of Eden, the Talking Serpent, the Fall of Man, the
Dreams of Joseph the Carpenter, the pretended Resurrection and As-
cension, of which there is even no historical relation – for no histo-
rian of those times mentions such a thing – he gets into the pathless
region of confusion, and turns either fanatic or hypocrite. He forces
his mind, and pretends to believe what he does not believe. This is in
general the case with the Methodists. Their religion is all creed and
no morals.
I have now, my friend, given you a facsimile of my mind on the
subject of religion and creeds, and my wish is, that you make this let-
ter as publicly known as you find opportunities of doing.
Yours, in friendship,
Thomas Paine
New York, August 15, 1806
Correspondence Between Thomas Paine and Samuel
Adams Regarding Religion and Deism
Correspondence With The
Hon. Samuel Adams
To the Editor of the National Intelligencer,
Federal City
By Thomas Paine
Toward the latter end of last December I received a letter from a
venerable patriot, Samuel Adams, dated Boston, November thirtieth.
It came by a private hand, which I suppose was the cause of the de-
lay. I wrote Mr. Adams an answer, dated January first, and that I
might be certain of his receiving it, and also that I might know of that
reception, I desired a friend of mine at Washington to put it under
cover to some friend of his at Boston, and desire him to present it to
Mr. Adams.
The letter was accordingly put under cover while I was present,
and given to one of the clerks of the post-office to seal and put in the
mail. The clerk put it in his pocket-book, and either forgot to put it
into the mail, or supposed he had done so among other letters. The
postmaster- general, on learning this mistake, informed me of it last
Saturday, and as the cover was then out of date, the letter was put un-
der a new cover, with the same request, and forwarded by the post.
I felt concern at this accident, lest Mr. Adams should conclude I
was unmindful of his attention to me; and therefore, lest any further
accident should prevent or delay his receiving it, as well as to relieve
myself from that concern, I give the letter an opportunity of reaching
him by the newspapers.
I am the more induced to do this, because some manuscript cop-
ies have been taken of both letters, and therefore there is a possibility
of imperfect copies getting into print; and besides this, if some of the
Federalists printers (for I hope they are not all base alike) could get
hold of a copy, they would make no scruple of altering it, and pub-
lishing it as mine. I therefore send you the original letter of Mr. Ad-
ams, and my own copy of the answer.
Thomas Paine
Federal City
Boston, November 30, 1802
Sir:
I have frequently with pleasure reflected on your services to my
native and your adopted country. Your “Common Sense” and your
“Crisis” unquestionably awakened the public mind, and led the peo-
ple loudly to call for a declaration of our national independence. I
therefore esteemed you as a warm friend to the liberty and lasting
welfare of the human race. But when I heard that you had turned your
mind to a defense of infidelity, I felt myself much astonished and
more grieved that you had attempted a measure so injurious to the
feelings and so repugnant to the true interest of so great a part of the
citizens of the United States.
The people of New England, if you will allow me to use a Scrip-
ture phrase, are fast returning to their first love. Will you excite
among them the spirit of angry controversy, at a time when they are
hastening to unity and peace? I am told that some of our newspapers
have announced your intention to publish an additional pamphlet
upon the principles of your “Age of Reason.”
Do you think that your pen, or the pen of any other man can
unchristianize the mass of our citizens, or have you hopes of convert-
ing a few of them to assist you in so bad a cause? We ought to think
ourselves happy in the enjoyment of opinion without the danger of
persecution by civil or ecclesiastical law.
Our friend, the President of the United States, has been calumni-
ated for his liberal sentiments, by men who have attributed that liber-
ality to a latent design to promote the cause of infidelity. This and all
other slanders have been made without a shadow of proof. Neither
religion nor liberty can long subsist in the tumult of altercation, and
amidst the noise and violence of faction.
Felix qui cautus.
Adieu. SAMUEL ADAMS.
Thomas Paine 232
MR. THOMAS PAINE.

MY DEAR AND VENERABLE FRIEND SAMUEL ADAMS:
I received with great pleasure your friendly and affectionate let-
ter of November thirtieth, and I thank you also for the frankness of it.
Between men in pursuit of truth, and whose object is the happiness of
man both here and hereafter, there ought to be no reserve. Even error
has a claim to indulgence, if not respect, when it is believed to be
truth.
I am obliged to you for your affectionate remembrance of what
you style my services in awakening the public mind to a declaration
of independence, and supporting it after it was declared. I also, like
you, have often looked back on those times and have thought that if
independence had not been declared at the time it was, the public
mind could not have been brought up to it afterwards.
It will immediately occur to you, who were so intimately ac-
quainted with the situation of things at that time, that I allude to the
black times of Seventy-six; for though I know, and you my friend
also know, they were no other than the natural consequence of the
military blunders of that campaign, the country might have viewed
them as proceeding from a natural inability to support its cause
against the enemy, and have sunk under the despondency of that mis-
conceived idea. This was the impression against which it was neces-
sary the country should be strongly animated.
I come now to the second part of your letter, on which I shall be
as frank with you as you are with me.
“But (say you), when I heard you had turned your mind to a de-
fense of Infidelity I felt myself much astonished, etc.” – What, my
good friend, do you call believing in God infidelity? for that is the
great point maintained in the “Age of Reason” against all divided be-
liefs and allegorical divinities. The Bishop of Llandaff (Doctor Wat-
son) not only acknowledges this, but pays me some compliments
upon it (in his answer to the second part of that work). “There is
(says he) a philosophical sublimity in some of your ideas when
speaking of the Creator of the Universe.”
What then (my much esteemed friend, for I do not respect you
the less because we differ, and that perhaps not much in religious
sentiments), what, I ask, is this thing called infidelity? If we go back

to your ancestors and mine three or four hundred years ago, for we
must have had fathers and grandfathers or we should not be here, we
shall find them praying to Saints and Virgins, and believing in purga-
tory and transubstantiation; and therefore all of us are infidels ac-
cording to our forefathers’ belief. If we go back to times more
ancient we shall again be infidels according to the belief of some
other forefathers.
The case, my friend is, that the world has been over-run with fa-
ble and creeds of human invention, with sectaries of whole nations
against all other nations, and sectaries of those sectaries in each of
them against each other. Every sectary, except the Quakers, has been
a persecutor. Those who fled from persecution persecuted in their
turn, and it is this confusion of creeds that has filled the world with
persecution and deluged it with blood.
Even the depredation on your commerce by the Barbary powers
sprang from the crusades of the Church against those powers. It was
a war of creed against creed, each boasting of God for its author, and
reviling each other with the name of infidel. If I do not believe as you
believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and this is all
that it proves.
There is however one point of union wherein all religions meet,
and that is in the first article of every man’s creed, and of every na-
tion’s creed, that has any creed at all: I believe in God. Those who
rest here, and there are millions who do, cannot be wrong as far as
their creed goes. Those who choose to go further may be wrong, for
it is impossible that all can be right, since there is so much contradic-
tion among them. The first therefore are, in my opinion, on the safest
side.
I presume you are so far acquainted with ecclesiastical history
as to know, and the bishop who has answered me has been obliged to
acknowledge the fact, that the books that compose the New Testa-
ment were voted by yeas and nays to be the Word of God, as you now
vote a law, by the popish Councils of Nice and Laodicea about one
thousand four hundred and fifty years ago. With respect to the fact
there is no dispute, neither do I mention it for the sake of controversy.
This vote may appear authority enough to some, and not authority
Thomas Paine 234
enough to others. It is proper however that everybody should know

the fact.
With respect to the “Age of Reason,” which you so much con-
demn, and that I believe without having read it, for you say only that
you heard of it, I will inform you of a circumstance, because you
cannot know it by other means.
I have said in the first page of the first part of that work that it
had long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon religion, but
that I had reserved it to a later time of life. I have now to inform you
why I wrote it and published it at the time I did.
In the first place, I saw my life in continual danger. My friends
were falling as fast as the guillotine could cut their heads off, and as I
every day expected the same fate, I resolved to begin my work. I ap-
peared to myself to be on my death-bed, for death was on every side
of me, and I had no time to lose. This accounts for my writing it at the
time I did; and so nicely did the time and the intention meet, that I
had not finished the first part of that work more than six hours before
I was arrested and taken to prison. Joel Barlow was with me and
knows the fact.
In the second place, the people of France were running headlong
into atheism, and I had the work translated and published in their
own language to stop them in that career, and fix them to the first ar-
ticle (as I have before said) of every man’s creed who has any creed
at all, I believe in God.
I endangered my own life, in the first place, by opposing in the
Convention the execution of the King, and by laboring to show they
were trying the monarchy and not the man, and that the crimes im-
puted to him were the crimes of the monarchical system; and I en-
dangered it a second time by opposing atheism; and yet some of your
priests, for I do not believe that all are perverse, cry out, in the
war-whoop of monarchical priestcraft, “What an infidel, what a
wicked man, is Thomas Paine!” They might as well add, “for he be-
lieves in God and is against shedding blood.”
But all this war-whoop of the pulpit has some concealed object.
Religion is not the cause, but is the stalking horse. They put it for-
ward to conceal themselves behind it. It is not a secret that there has
been a party composed of the leaders of the Federalists, for I do not

include all Federalists with their leaders, who have been working by
various means for several years past to overturn the Federal Consti-
tution established on the representative system, and place govern-
ment in the New World on the corrupt system of the Old.
To accomplish this, a large standing army was necessary, and as
a pretense for such an army, the danger of a foreign invasion must be
bellowed forth from the pulpit, from the press, and by their public or-
ators.
I am not of a disposition inclined to suspicion. It is in its nature a
mean and cowardly passion, and upon the whole, even admitting er-
ror into the case, it is better, I am sure, it is more generous, to be
wrong on the side of confidence than on the side of suspicion. But I
know as a fact that the English Government distributes annually fif-
teen hundred pounds sterling among the Presbyterian ministers in
England and one thousand among those in Ireland; and when I hear
of the strange discourses of some of your ministers and professors of
colleges, I cannot, as the Quakers say, find freedom in my mind to
acquit them. Their anti-revolutionary doctrines invite suspicion even
against one’s will, and in spite of one’s charity to believe well of
them.
As you have given me one Scripture phrase I will give you an-
other for those ministers. It is said in Exodus xxii, 28, “Thou shalt
not revile the Gods nor curse the ruler of thy people.” But those min-
isters, such I mean as Dr. Emmons, curse ruler and people both, for
the majority are, politically, the people, and it is those who have cho-
sen the ruler whom they curse. As to the first part of the verse, that of
not reviling the Gods, it makes no part of my scripture. I have but one
God.
Since I began this letter, for I write it by piece-meal as I have lei-
sure, I have seen the four letters that passed between you and John
Adams. In your first letter you say, “Let divines and philosophers,
statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age by
inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity and
universal philanthropy.”
Why, my dear friend, this is exactly my religion, and is the whole
of it. That you may have an idea that the “Age of Reason” (for I be-
Thomas Paine 236
lieve you have not read it) inculcates this reverential fear and love of
the Deity I will give you a paragraph from it.
“Do we want to contemplate His power? We see it in the immen-
sity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate His wisdom: We see
it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is
governed. Do we want to contemplate His munificence? We see it in
the abundance with which He fills the earth. Do we want to contem-
plate His mercy? We see it in His not withholding that abundance
even from the unthankful.”
As I am fully with you in your first part, that respecting the De-
ity, so am I in your second, that of universal philanthropy; by which I
do not mean merely the sentimental benevolence of wishing well,
but the practical benevolence of doing good. We cannot serve the
Deity in the manner we serve those who cannot do without that ser-
vice. He needs no service from us. We can add nothing to eternity.
But it is in our power to render a service acceptable to Him, and that
is not by praying, but by endeavoring to make his creatures happy.
A man does not serve God when he prays, for it is himself he is
trying to serve; and as to hiring or paying men to pray, as if the Deity
needed instruction, it is, in my opinion, an abomination. One good
schoolmaster is of more use and of more value than a load of such
persons as Dr. Emmons and some others.
You, my dear and much respected friend, are now far in the vale
of years; I have yet , I believe, some years in store, for I have a good
state of health and a happy mind, and I take care of both, by nourish-
ing the first with temperance and the latter with abundance. This, I
believe, you will allow to be the true philosophy of life.
You will see by my third letter to the citizens of the United States
that I have been exposed to, and preserved through, many dangers;
but instead of buffeting the Deity with prayers as if I distrusted Him,
or must dictate to Him, I reposed myself on His protection; and you,
my friend, will find, even in your last moments, more consolation in
the silence of resignation than in the murmuring wish of a prayer.
In everything which you say in your second letter to John Ad-
ams, respecting our rights as men and citizens in this world, I am per-
fectly with you. On other points we have to answer to our Creator
and not to each other. The key of heaven is not in the keeping of any
sect, nor ought the road to it be obstructed by any.
Our relation to each other in this world is as men, and the man
who is a friend to man and to his rights, let his religious opinions be
what they may, is a good citizen, to whom I can give, as I ought to do,
and as every other ought, the right hand of fellowship, and to none
with more hearty good will, my dear friend, than to you.
Thomas Paine
Federal City, January 1, 1803
OF THE WORD
“RELIGION,” AND OTHER
WORDS OF UNCERTAIN
SIGNIFICATION
he word religion is a word of forced application when used
T with respect to the worship of God. The root of the word is
the Latin verb ligo, to tie or bind. From ligo, comes religo, to tie or
bind over again, to make more fast – from religo, comes the substan-
tive religio, which, with the addition of n makes the English substan-
tive religion.
The French use the word properly: when a woman enters a con-
vent she is called a novitiate, that is, she is upon trial or probation.
When she takes the oath, she is called a religieuse, that is, she is tied
or bound by that oath to the performance of it. We use the word in the
same kind of sense when we say we will religiously perform the
promise that we make.
But the word, without referring to its etymology, has, in the
manner it is used, no definite meaning, because it does not designate
what religion a man is of. There is the religion of the Chinese, of the
Tartars, of the Brahmins, of the Persians, of the Jews, of the Turks,
etc.
The word Christianity is equally as vague as the word religion.
No two sectaries can agree what is it. It is lo here and lo there. The
two principal sectaries, Papists and Protestants, have often cut each
other’s throats about it.
The Papists call the Protestants heretics, and the Protestants call
the Papists idolaters. The minor sectaries have shown the same spirit
of rancor, but as the civil law restrains them from blood, they content
themselves with preaching damnation against each other.
The word protestant has a positive signification in the sense it is

used. It means protesting against the authority of the Pope, and this is
the only article in which the Protestants agree. In every other sense,
with respect to religion, the word protestant is as vague as the word
Christian.
When we say an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, a Baptist, a
Quaker, we know what those persons are, and what tenets they hold;
but when we say a “Christian,” we know he is not a Jew nor a
Mahometan, but we know not if he be a trinitarian or an anti-trinitar-
ian, a believer in what is called the immaculate conception, or a dis-
believer, a man of seven sacraments, or of two sacraments, or of
none. The word “Christian” describes what a man is not, but not
what he is.
The word theology, from Theos, the Greek word for God, and
meaning the study and knowledge of God, is a word that strictly
speaking belongs to Theists or Deists, and not to the Christians. The
head of the Christian Church is the person called Christ, but the head
of the Church of the Theists, or Deists, as they are more commonly
called (from Deus, the Latin word for God), is God Himself; and
therefore the word “Theology” belongs to that Church which has
Theos or God for its head, and not to the Christian Church which has
the person called Christ for its head. Their technical word is Chris-
tianity, and they cannot agree what Christianity is.
The words revealed religion, and natural religion, also require
explanation. They are both invented terms, contrived by the Church
for the support of priestcraft. With respect to the first, there is no evi-
dence of any such thing, except in the universal revelation that God
has made of His power, His wisdom, His goodness, in the structure
of the universe, and in all the works of creation.
We have no cause or ground from anything we behold in those
works to suppose God would deal partially by mankind, and reveal
knowledge to one nation and withhold it form another, and then
damn them for not knowing it. The sun shines an equal quantity of
light all over the world – and mankind in all ages and countries are
endued with reason, and blessed with sight, to read the visible works
of God in the creation, and so intelligent is this book that he that runs
may read.
Thomas Paine 240
We admire the wisdom of the ancients, yet they had no Bibles

nor books called “revelation.” They cultivated the reason that God
gave them, studied Him in His works, and arose to eminence.
As to the Bible, whether true or fabulous, it is a history, and his-
tory is not a revelation. If Solomon had seven hundred wives, and
three hundred concubines, and if Samson slept in Delilah’s lap, and
she cut his hair off, the relation of those things is mere history that
needed no revelation from heaven to tell it; neither does it need any
revelation to tell us that Samson was a fool for his pains, and Solo-
mon too.
As to the expressions so often used in the Bible, that the word of
the Lord came to such an one, or such an one, it was the fashion of
speaking in those times, like the expression used by a Quaker, that
the spirit moveth him, or that used by priests, that they have a call.
We ought not to be deceived by phrases because they are ancient. But
if we admit the supposition that God would condescend to reveal
Himself in words, we ought not to believe it would be in such idle
and profligate stories as are in the Bible; and it is for this reason,
among others which our reverence to God inspires, that the Deists
deny that the book called the Bible is the Word of God, or that it is re-
vealed religion.
With respect to the term natural religion, it is upon the face of it,
the opposite of artificial religion, and it is impossible for any man to
be certain that what is called revealed religion is not artificial.
Man has the power of making books, inventing stories of God,
and calling them revelation, or the Word of God. The Koran exists as
an instance that this can be done, and we must be credulous indeed to
suppose that this is the only instance, and Mahomet the only impos-
tor. The Jews could match him, and the Church of Rome could over-
match the Jews. The Mahometans believe the Koran, the Christians
believe the Bible, and it is education makes all the difference.
Books, whether Bibles or Korans, carry no evidence of being
the work of any other power than man. It is only that which man can-
not do that carries the evidence of being the work of a superior
power. Man could not invent and make a universe – he could not in-
vent nature, for nature is of divine origin. It is the laws by which the
universe is governed.
When, therefore, we look through nature up to nature’s God, we

are in the right road of happiness, but when we trust to books as the
Word of God, and confide in them as revealed religion, we are afloat
on the ocean of uncertainty, and shatter into contending factions. The
term, therefore, natural religion, explains itself to be divine religion,
and the term revealed religion involves in it the suspicion of being
artificial.
To show the necessity of understanding the meaning of words, I
will mention an instance of a minister, I believe of the Episcopalian
Church of Newark, New Jersey. He wrote and published a book, and
entitled it “An Antidote to Deism.” An antidote to Deism must be
Atheism. It has no other antidote – for what can be an antidote to the
belief of a God, but the disbelief of God? Under the tuition of such
pastors, what but ignorance and false information can be expected?
Predestination Remarks on
Romans, IX, 18-21
Addressed to the Ministers of the Calvinistic Church

aul, in speaking of God, says, “Therefore hath He mercy on
P whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth.
Thou wilt say, why doth He yet find fault? For who hath resisted His
will? Nay, but who art thou, O man, that repliest against God? Shall
the thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why hast Thou made me
thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay of the same lump, to
make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?”
I shall leave it to Calvinists and Universalists to wrangle about
these expressions, and to oppose or corroborate them by other pas-
sages from other books of the Old or New Testament. I shall go to the
root at once, and say, that the whole passage is presumption and non-
sense.
Presumption, because it pretends to know the private mind of
God: and nonsense, because the cases it states as parallel cases have
no parallel in them, and are opposite cases.
The first expression says, “Therefore hath He (God) mercy on
whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth.” As this
is ascribing to the attribute of God’s power at the expense of His jus-
tice, I, as a believer in the justice of God, disbelieve the assertion of
Paul. The Predestinarians, of which the loquacious Paul was one, ap-
pear to acknowledge but one attribute in God, that of power, which
may not improperly be called the physical attribute. The Deists, in
addition to this, believe in His moral attributes, those of justice and
goodness.
In the next verses, Paul gets himself into what in vulgar life is
called a hobble, and he tries to get out of it by nonsense and soph-
istry; for having committed himself by saying that “God hath mercy
on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth,” he

felt the difficulty he was in, and the objections that would be made,
which he anticipates by saying, “Thou wilt say then unto me, Why
doth He (God) yet find fault? for who hath resisted His will? Nay,
but, O man, who art thou, that repliest against God!”
This is neither answering the question, nor explaining the case.
It is downright quibbling and shuffling off the question, and the
proper retort upon him would have been, “Nay, but who art thou, pre-
sumptuous Paul, that puttest thyself in God’s place?”
Paul, however, goes on and says, “Shall the thing formed say to
him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus?” Yes, if the thing
felt itself hurt, and could speak, it would say it. But as pots and pans
have not the faculty of speech, the supposition of such things speak-
ing is putting nonsense in the place of argument, and is too ridiculous
even to admit of apology. It shows to what wretched shifts sophistry
will resort.
Paul, however, dashes on, and the more he tries to reason the
more he involves himself, and the more ridiculous he appears. “Hath
not,” says he, “the potter power over the clay of the same lump, to
make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?”
In this metaphor, and a most wretched one it is, Paul makes the
potter to represent God; the lump of clay the whole human race; the
vessels unto honor those souls “on whom He hath mercy because He
will have mercy”; and the vessels unto dishonor, those souls “whom
He hardeneth (for damnation) because He will harden them.” The
metaphor is false in everyone of its points, and if it admits of any
meaning or conclusion, it is the reverse of what Paul intended and the
Calvinists understand.
In the first place, a potter doth not, because he cannot, make ves-
sels of different qualities, from the same lump of clay; he cannot
make a fine china bowl, intended to ornament a sideboard, from the
same lump of clay that he makes a coarse pan, intended for a
close-stool. The potter selects his clays for different uses, according
to their different qualities, and degrees of fineness and goodness.
Paul might as well talk of making gun-flints from the same stick
of wood of which the gun-stock is made, as of making china bowls
Thomas Paine 244
from the same lump of clay of which are made common earthen pots
and pans.
Paul could not have hit upon a more unfortunate metaphor for
his purpose, than this of the potter and the clay; for if any inference is
to follow from it, it is that as the potter selects his clay for different
kinds of vessels according to the different qualities and degrees of
fineness and goodness in the clay, so God selects for future happi-
ness those among mankind who excel in purity and good life, which
is the reverse of predestination.
In the second place there is no comparison between the souls of

men, and vessels made of clay; and, therefore, to put one to represent
the other is a false position. The vessels, or the clay they are made
from, are insensible of honor or dishonor. They neither suffer nor en-
joy. The clay is not punished that serves the purpose of a close-stool,
nor is the finer sort rendered happy that is made up into a
punch-bowl.
The potter violates no principle of justice in the different uses to

which he puts his different clays; for he selects as an artist, not as a
moral judge; and the materials he works upon know nothing, and feel
nothing, of his mercy or his wrath. Mercy or wrath would make a
potter appear ridiculous, when bestowed upon his clay. He might
kick some of his pots to pieces.
But the case is quite different with man, either in this world or
the next. He is a being sensible of misery as well as of happiness, and
therefore Paul argues like an unfeeling idiot, when he compares man
to clay on a potter’s wheel, or to vessels made therefrom: and with
respect to God, it is an offense to His attributes of justice, goodness,
and wisdom, to suppose that He would treat the choicest work of cre-
ation like inanimate and insensible clay. If Paul believed that God
made man after His own image, he dishonors it by making that image
and a brickbat to be alike.
The absurd and impious doctrine of predestination, a doctrine

destructive of morals, would never have been thought of had it not
been for some stupid passages in the Bible, which priestcraft at first,
and ignorance since, have imposed upon mankind as revelation.
Nonsense ought to be treated as nonsense, wherever it be found;

and had this been done in the rational manner it ought to be done, in-
stead of intimating and mincing the matter, as has been too much the
case, the nonsense and false doctrine of the Bible, with all the aid that
priestcraft can give, could never have stood their ground against the
divine reason that God has given to man.
Doctor Franklin gives a remarkable instance of the truth of this,
in an account of his life, written by himself. He was in London at the
time of which he speaks. “Some volumes,” says he, “against Deism,
fell into my hands. They were said to be the substance of sermons
preached at Boyle’s lectures.
“It happened that they produced on me an effect precisely the re-
verse of what was intended by the writers; for the arguments of the
Deists, which were cited in order to be refuted, appeared to me more
forcible than the refutation itself. In a word I soon became a perfect
Deist.” – New York edition of Franklin’s Life, page 93.
All America, and more than all America, knows Franklin. His
life was devoted to the good and improvement of man. Let, then,
those who profess a different creed, imitate his virtues, and excel him
if they can.
Of the Sabbath-Day in
Connecticut
he word Sabbath, means REST; that is, cessation from la-
T bor, but the stupid Blue Laws* of Connecticut make a labor
of rest, for they oblige a person to sit still from sunrise to sunset on a
Sabbath-day, which is hard work. Fanaticism made those laws, for
where such laws prevail hypocrisy will prevail also.
One of those laws says, “No person shall run on a Sabbath-day,
nor walk in his garden, nor elsewhere; but reverently to and from
meeting.” These fanatical hypocrites forgot that God dwells not in
temples made with hands, and that the earth is full of His glory.
One of the finest scenes and subjects of religious contemplation
is to walk into the woods and fields, and survey the works of the God
of the Creation. The wide expanse of heaven, the earth covered with
verdure, the lofty forest, the waving corn, the magnificent roll of
mighty rivers, and the murmuring melody of the cheerful brooks, are
scenes that inspire the mind with gratitude and delight.
But this the gloomy Calvinist of Connecticut must not behold on
a Sabbath-day. Entombed within the walls of his dwelling, he shuts
from his view the Temple of Creation. The sun shines no joy to him.
The gladdening voice of nature calls on him in vain. He is deaf,
dumb and blind to everything around that God has made. Such is the
Sabbath-day of Connecticut.
From whence could come this miserable notion of devotion? It
comes from the gloominess of the Calvinistic creed. If men love
darkness rather than light, because their works are evil, the ulcerated
mind of a Calvinist, who sees God only in terror, and sits brooding
over the scenes of hell and damnation, can have no joy in beholding
* They were called Blue Laws because they were originally printed on
blue paper. – Author.
the glories of the creation. Nothing in that mighty and wondrous sys-
tem accords with his principles or his devotion.
He sees nothing there that tells him that God created millions on
purpose to be damned, and that the children of a span long are born to
burn forever in hell. The creation preaches a different doctrine to
this. We there see that the care and goodness of God is extended im-
partially over all the creatures He has made. The worm of the earth
shares His protection equally with the elephant of the desert. The
grass that springs beneath our feet grows by His bounty as well as the
cedars of Lebanon.
Everything in the creation reproaches the Calvinist with unjust
ideas of God, and disowns the hardness and ingratitude of his princi-
ples. Therefore he shuns the sight of them on a Sabbath-day.
AN ENEMY TO CANT AND IMPOSITION.
— Thomas Paine
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE
SOCIETY, STYLING ITSELF
THE MISSIONARY
SOCIETY
T he New York Gazette of the sixteenth (August) contains the following ar-
ticle – “On Tuesday, a committee of the Missionary Society, consisting
chiefly of distinguished Clergymen, had an interview, at the City Hotel, with the
chiefs of the Osage tribe of Indians, now in this city (New York) to whom they pre-
sented a Bible, together with an address, the object of which was to inform them
that this good book contained the will and laws of the GREAT SPIRIT.”
It is to be hoped some humane person will, on account of our

people on the frontiers, as well as of the Indians, undeceive them
with respect to the present the missionaries have made them, and
which they call a good book, containing, they say, the will and laws
of the GREAT SPIRIT. Can those missionaries suppose that the as-
sassination of men, women and children, and sucking infants, related
in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., and blasphemously said
to be done by the command of the Lord, the Great Spirit, can be edi-
fying to our Indian neighbors, or advantageous to us?
Is not the Bible warfare the same kind of warfare as the Indians
themselves carry on, that of indiscriminate destruction, and against
which humanity shudders? Can the horrid examples and vulgar ob-
scenity with which the Bible abounds improve the morals or civilize
the manners of the Indians? Will they learn sobriety and decency
from drunken Noah and beastly Lot; or will their daughters be edi-
fied by the example of Lot’s daughters?
Will the prisoners they take in war be treated the better by their
knowing the horrid story of Samuel’s hewing Agag in pieces like a
block of wood, or David’s putting them under harrows of iron?
Will not the shocking accounts of the destruction of the

Canaanites, when the Israelites invaded their country, suggest the
idea that we may serve them in the same manner, or the accounts stir
them up to do the like to our people on the frontiers, and then justify
the assassination by the Bible the missionaries have given them?
Will those missionary societies never leave off doing mischief?
In the accounts which this missionary committee give of the in-
terview, they make the chief of the Indians to say, that, “as neither he
nor his people could read it, he begged that some good white man
might be sent to instruct them.”
It is necessary the general Government keep a strict eye over
those missionary societies, who, under the pretense of instructing the
Indians, send spies into their country to find out the best lands. No
society should be permitted to have intercourse with the Indian
tribes, nor send any person among them, but with the knowledge and
consent of the Government.
The present Administration [Jefferson’s] has brought the Indi-
ans into a good disposition, and is improving them in the moral and
civil comforts of life; but if these self-created societies be suffered to
interfere, and send their speculating missionaries among them, the
laudable object of government will be defeated. Priests, we know,
are not remarkable for doing anything gratis; they have in general
some scheme in everything they do, either to impose on the ignorant,
or derange the operations of government.
A FRIEND TO THE INDIANS — Thomas Paine
ORIGIN OF
FREEMASONRY
t is always understood that Freemasons have a secret which
I they carefully conceal; but from everything that can be col-
lected from their own accounts of Masonry, their real secret is no
other than their origin, which but few of them understand; and those
who do, envelop it in mystery.
The Society of Masons are distinguished into three classes or
degrees. 1st. The Entered Apprentice. 2d. The Fellow Craft. 3d. The
Master Mason.
The Entered Apprentice knows but little more of Masonry than
the use of signs and tokens, and certain steps and words by which
Masons can recognize each other without being discovered by a per-
son who is not a Mason. The Fellow Craft is not much better in-
structed in Masonry, than the Entered Apprentice. It is only in the
Master Mason’s Lodge, that whatever knowledge remains of the ori-
gin of Masonry is preserved and concealed.
In 1730, Samuel Pritchard, member of a constituted lodge in
England, published a treatise entitled “Masonry Dissected”; and
made oath before the Lord Mayor of London that it was a true copy.
“Samuel Pritchard maketh oath that the copy hereunto annexed is a
true and genuine copy of every particular.” In his work he has given
the catechism or examination, in question and answer, of the Ap-
prentices, the Fellow Craft, and the Master Mason. There was no dif-
ficulty in doing this, as it is mere form.
In his introduction he says, “the original institution of Masonry
consisted in the foundation of the liberal arts and sciences, but more
especially in geometry, for at the building of the tower of Babel, the
art and mystery of Masonry was first introduced, and from thence
handed down by Euclid, a worthy and excellent mathematician of
the Egyptians; and he communicated it to Hiram, the Master Mason

concerned in building Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.”
Besides the absurdity of deriving Masonry from the building of
Babel, where, according to the story, the confusion of languages pre-
vented the builders understanding each other, and consequently of
communicating any knowledge they had, there is a glaring contra-
diction in point of chronology in the account he gives.
Solomon’s Temple was built and dedicated 1,004 years before
the Christian era; and Euclid, as may be seen in the tables of chronol-
ogy, lived 277 years before the same era. It was therefore impossible
that Euclid could communicate anything to Hiram, since Euclid did
not live till seven hundred years after the time of Hiram.
In 1783, Captain George Smith, inspector of the Royal Artillery
Academy at Woolwich, in England, and Provincial Grand Master of
Masonry for the County of Kent, published a treatise entitled, “The
Use and Abuse of Freemasonry.”
In his chapter of the antiquity of Masonry, he makes it to be co-
eval with creation, “when,” says he, “the sovereign architect raised
on Masonic principles the beauteous globe, and commanded the
master science, geometry, to lay the planetary world, and to regulate
by its laws the whole stupendous system in just, unerring proportion,
rolling round the central sun.
“But,” continues he, “I am not at liberty publicly to undraw the
curtain, and openly to descant on this head; it is sacred, and ever will
remain so; those who are honored with the trust will not reveal it, and
those who are ignorant of it cannot betray it.”
By this last part of the phrase, Smith means the two inferior
classes, the Fellow Craft and the Entered Apprentice, for he says in
the next page of his work, “It is not every one that is barely initiated
into Freemasonry that is intrusted with all the mysteries thereto be-
longing; they are not attainable as things of course, nor by every ca-
pacity.”
The learned, but unfortunate Doctor Dodd, Grand Chaplain of
Masonry, in his oration at the dedication of Freemason’s Hall, Lon-
don, traces Masonry through a variety of stages. “Masons,” says he,
“are well informed from their own private and interior records that
Thomas Paine 252
the building of Solomon’s Temple is an important era, from whence

they derive many mysteries of their art.
“Now,” says he, “be it remembered that this great event took
place above one thousand years before the Christian era, and conse-
quently more than a century before Homer, the first of the Grecian
poets, wrote; and about five centuries before Pythagoras brought
from the East his sublime system of truly Masonic instruction to illu-
minate our western world. But, remote as this period is, we date not
from thence the commencement of our art. For though it might owe
to the wise and glorious King of Israel some of its many mystic forms
and hieroglyphic ceremonies, yet certainly the art itself is coeval
with man, the great subject of it.
“We trace,” continues he, “its footsteps in the most distant, the
most remote ages and nations of the world. We find it among the first
and most celebrated civilizers of the East. We deduce it regularly
from the first astronomers on the plains of Chaldea, to the wise and
mystic kings and priests of Egypt, the sages of Greece, and the phi-
losophers of Rome.”
From these reports and declarations of Masons of the highest or-
der in the institution, we see that Masonry, without publicly declar-
ing so, lays claim to some divine communications from the Creator,
in a manner different from, and unconnected with, the book which
the Christians call the Bible; and the natural result from this is, that
Masonry is derived from some very ancient religion, wholly inde-
pendent of and unconnected with that book.
To come then at once to the point, Masonry (as I shall show from
the customs, ceremonies, hieroglyphics, and chronology of Ma-
sonry) is derived and is the remains of the religion of the ancient
Druids; who, like the magi of Persia and the priests of Heliopolis in
Egypt, were priests of the sun. They paid worship to this great lumi-
nary, as the great visible agent of a great invisible first cause, whom
they styled “Time without limits.”
The Christian religion and Masonry have one and the same
common origin: both are derived from the worship of the sun. The
difference between their origin is, that the Christian religion is a par-
ody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man whom they
call Christ, in the place of the sun, and pay him the same adoration
which was originally paid to the sun, as I have shown in the chapter
on the origin of the Christian religion.
In Masonry many of the ceremonies of the Druids are preserved
in their original state, at least without any parody. With them the sun
is still the sun; and his image in the form of the sun is the great em-
blematical ornament of Masonic lodges and Masonic dresses. It is
the central figure on their aprons, and they wear it also pendant on
the breast of their lodges, and in their processions. It has the figure of
a man, as at the head of the sun, as Christ is always represented.
At what period of antiquity, or in what nation, this religion was
first established, is lost in the labyrinth of unrecorded time. It is gen-
erally ascribed to the ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians and
Chaldeans, and reduced afterwards to a system regulated by the ap-
parent progress of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac by
Zoroaster the lawgiver of Persia, from whence Pythagoras brought it
into Greece. It is to these matters Dr. Dodd refers in the passage al-
ready quoted from his oration.
The worship of the sun as the great visible agent of a great invis-
ible first cause, “Time without limits,” spread itself over a consider-
able part of Asia and Africa, from thence to Greece and Rome,
through all ancient Gaul, and into Britain and Ireland.
Smith, in his chapter on the antiquity of Masonry in Britain,
says, that “notwithstanding the obscurity which envelops Masonic
history in that country, various circumstances contribute to prove
that Freemasonry was introduced into Britain about 1,030 years be-
fore Christ.”
It cannot be Masonry in its present state that Smith here alludes
to. The Druids flourished in Britain at the period he speaks of, and it
is from them that Masonry is descended. Smith has put the child in
the place of the parent.
It sometimes happens, as well in writing as in conversation, that
a person lets slip an expression that serves to unravel what he intends
to conceal, and this is the case with Smith, for in the same chapter he
says, “The Druids, when they committed anything to writing, used
the Greek alphabet, and I am bold to assert that the most perfect re-
mains of the Druids’ rites and ceremonies are preserved in the cus-
Thomas Paine 254
toms and ceremonies of the Masons that are to be found existing

among mankind. My brethren,” says he, “may be able to trace them
with greater exactness than I am at liberty to explain to the public.”
This is a confession from a Master Mason, without intending it
to be so understood by the public, that Masonry is the remains of the
religion of the Druids; the reasons for the Masons keeping this a se-
cret I shall explain in the course of this work.
As the study and contemplation of the Creator [is] in the works
of the creation, the sun, as the great visible agent of that Being, was
the visible object of the adoration of the Druids; all their religious
rites and ceremonies had reference to the apparent progress of the
sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac, and his influence upon
the earth.
The Masons adopt the same practices. The roof of their temples
or lodges is ornamented with a sun, and the floor is a representation
of the variegated face of the earth either by carpeting or mosaic
work.
Freemasons’ Hall, in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
London, is a magnificent building, and cost upward of 12,000
pounds sterling. Smith, in speaking of this building, says (page 152),
“The roof of this magnificent hall is in all probability the highest
piece of finished architecture in Europe. In the center of this roof, a
most resplendent sun is represented in burnished gold, surrounded
with the twelve signs of the zodiac, with their respective characters.
After giving this description, he says, “The emblematical mean-
ing of the sun is well known to the enlightened and inquisitive Free-
mason; and as the real sun is situated in the center of the universe, so
the emblematical sun is the center of real Masonry. We all know”
continues he, “that the sun is the fountain of light, the source of the
seasons, the cause of the vicissitudes of day and night, the parent of
vegetation, the friend of man; hence the scientific Freemason only
knows the reason why the sun is placed in the center of this beautiful
hall.”
The Masons, in order to protect themselves from the persecution
of the Christian Church, have always spoken in a mystical manner of
the figure of the sun in their lodges, or, like the astronomer Lalande,
who is a Mason, been silent upon the subject.
It is their secret, especially in Catholic countries, because the
figure of the sun is the expressive criterion that denotes they are de-
scended from the Druids, and that wise, elegant, philosophical reli-
gion was the faith opposite to the faith of the gloomy Christian
Church.
The lodges of the Masons, if built for the purpose, are con-
structed in a manner to correspond with the apparent motion of the
sun. They are situated East and West. The master’s place is always in
the East. In the examination of an Entered Apprentice, the master,
among many other questions, asks him,
Q. “How is the lodge situated?”
A. “East and West.”
Q. “Why so?”
A. “Because all churches and chapels are, or ought to be so.”
This answer, which is mere catechismal form, is not an answer
to the question. It does no more than remove the question a point fur-
ther, which is, why ought all churches and chapels to be so? But as
the Entered Apprentice is not initiated into the druidical mysteries of
Masonry, he is not asked any questions a direct answer to which
would lead thereto.
Q. “Where stands your master?”
A. “In the East.”
Q. “Why so?”
A. “As the sun rises in the East and opens the day, so the master
stands in the East (with his right hand upon his left breast, being a
sign, and the square about his neck), to open the lodge, and set his
men at work.”
Q. “Where stand your wardens?”
A. “In the West.”
Q. “What is their business?”
A. “As the sun sets in the West to close the day, so the wardens
stand in the West (with their right hands upon their left breasts, being
Thomas Paine 256
a sign, and the level and plumb rule about their necks), to close the
lodge, and dismiss the men from labor, paying them their wages.”
Here the name of the sun is mentioned, but it is proper to ob-
serve that in this place it has reference only to labor or to the time of
labor, and not to any religious druidical rite or ceremony, as it would
have with respect to the situation of lodges East and West.
I have already observed in the chapter on the origin of the Chris-
tian religion, that the situation of churches East and West is taken
from the worship of the sun, which rises in the East, and has not the
least reference to the person called Jesus Christ.
The Christians never bury their dead on the North side of a
church; and a Mason’s lodge always has, or is supposed to have,
three windows which are called fixed lights, to distinguish them
from the movable lights of the sun and the moon. The master asks the
Entered Apprentice,
Q. “How are they (the fixed lights) situated?”
A. “East, West, and South.”
Q. “What are their uses?”
A. “To light the men to and from their work.”
Q. “Why are there no lights in the North?”
A. “Because the Sun darts no rays from thence.”
This, among numerous other instances, shows that the Christian
religion and Masonry have one and the same common origin, the an-
cient worship of the sun.
The high festival of the Masons is on the day they call St. John’s
day; but every enlightened Mason must know that holding their fes-
tival on this day has no reference to the person called St. John, and
that it is only to disguise the true cause of holding it on this day, that
they call the day by that name. As there were Masons, or at least Dru-
ids, many centuries before the time of St. John, if such a person ever
existed, the holding their festival on this day must refer to some
cause totally unconnected with John.
The case is, that the day called St. John’s day, is the
twenty-fourth of June, and is what is called midsummer day. The sun
is then arrived at the summer solstice; and, with respect to his
meridianal altitude, or height at high noon, appears for some days to

be of the same height.
The astronomical longest day, like the shortest day, is not every
year, on the same numerical day, and therefore the twenty-fourth of
June is always taken for midsummer day; and it is in honor of the
sun, which has then arrived at his greatest height in our hemisphere,
and not anything with respect to St. John, that this annual festival of
the Masons, taken from the Druids, is celebrated on midsummer day.
Customs will often outlive the remembrance of their origin, and
this is the case with respect to a custom still practiced in Ireland,
where the Druids flourished at the time they flourished in Britain.
On the eve of St. John’s day, that is, on the eve of midsummer
day, the Irish light fires on the tops of the hills. This can have no ref-
erence to St. John; but it has emblematical reference to the sun,
which on that day is at his highest summer elevation, and might in
common language be said to have arrived at the top of the hill.
As to what Masons, and books of Masonry, tell us of Solomon’s
Temple at Jerusalem, it is no wise improbable that some Masonic
ceremonies may have been derived from the building of that temple,
for the worship of the sun was in practice many centuries before the
temple existed, or before the Israelites came out of Egypt. And we
learn from the history of the Jewish kings, II Kings xxiii, that the
worship of the sun was performed by the Jews in that temple.
It is, however, much to be doubted if it was done with the same
scientific purity and religious morality with which it was performed
by the Druids, who, by all accounts that historically remain of them,
were a wise, learned, and moral class of men. The Jews, on the con-
trary, were ignorant of astronomy, and of science in general, and if a
religion founded upon astronomy fell into their hands, it is almost
certain it would be corrupted.
We do not read in the history of the Jews whether in the Bible or
elsewhere, that they were the inventors or the improvers of any one
art or science. Even in the building of this temple, the Jews did not
know how to square and frame the timber for beginning and carrying
on the work, and Solomon was obliged to send to Hiram, King of
Tyre (Zidon), to procure workmen; “for thou knowest” (says Solo-
Thomas Paine 258
mon to Hiram, I Kings v, 6), “that there is not among us any that can
skill to hew timber like unto the Zidonians.”
This temple was more properly Hiram’s Temple than Solo-
mon’s, and if the Masons derive anything from the building of it,
they owe it to the Zidonians and not to the Jews. But to return to the
worship of the sun in this temple.
It is said, II Kings xxiii, 5, “And [King Josiah] put down all the
idolatrous priests . . . that burned incense unto . . . the sun, the moon,
the planets, and all the host of heaven.” And it is said at the eleventh
verse: “And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had
given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the Lord . . . and
burned the chariot of the sun with fire”; verse 13, “And the high
places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of
the mount of corruption, which Solomon the King of Israel had
builded for Ashtoreth, the abomination of the Zidonians” (the very
people that built the temple) “did the king defile.”
Besides these things, the description that Josephus gives of the
decorations of this temple, resembles on a large scale those of a Ma-
son’s lodge. He says that the distribution of the several parts of the
Temple of the Jews represented all nature, particularly the parts most
apparent of it, as the sun, moon, the planets, the zodiac, the earth, the
elements; and that the system of the world was retraced there by nu-
merous ingenious emblems.
These, in all probability, are, what Josiah, in his ignorance, calls
the abominations of the Zidonians. Everything, however, drawn
from this temple, and applied to Masonry, still refers to the worship
of the sun, however corrupted or misunderstood by the Jews, and
consequently to the religion of the Druids.
Another circumstance, which shows that Masonry is derived
from some ancient system, prior to and unconnected with the Chris-
tian religion, is the chronology, or method of counting time, used by
the Masons in the records of their lodges. They make no use of what
is called the Christian era; and they reckon their months numerically,
as the ancient Egyptians did, and as the Quakers do now.
I have by me, a record of a French lodge, at the time the late
Duke of Orleans, then Duke de Chartres, was Grand Master of Ma-
sonry in France. It begins as follows: “the thirteenth day of the sixth

month of the year of the Venerable Lodge, 5773.
By what I observe in English books of Masonry, the English
Masons use the initials A. L. and not V. L. By A. L. they mean in the
year of Light, as the Christians by A.D. mean in the year of our Lord.
But A. L. like V. L. refers to the same chronological era, that is, to the
supposed time of the Creation.
In the chapter on the Christian religion, I have shown that the
cosmogony, that is the account of the Creation with which the book
of Genesis opens, has been taken and mutilated from the Zend-Aves-
ta of Zoroaster, and was fixed as a preface to the Bible after the Jews
returned from captivity in Babylon, and that the rabbins of the Jews
do not hold their account in Genesis to be a fact, but mere allegory.
The six thousand years in the Zend-Avesta, is changed or interpo-
lated into six days in the account of Genesis.
The Masons appear to have chosen the same period, and perhaps
to avoid the suspicion and persecution of the Church, have adopted
the era of the world, as the era of Masonry. The V. L. of the French,
and the A. L. of the English Mason, answer to the A. M. Anno Mundi,
or year of the world.
Though the Masons have taken many of their ceremonies and
hieroglyphics from the ancient Egyptians, it is certain they have not
taken their chronology from thence. If they had, the Church would
soon have sent them to the stake; as the chronology of the Egyptians,
like that of the Chinese, goes many thousand years beyond the Bible
chronology.
The religion of the Druids, as before said, was the same as the
religion of the ancient Egyptians. The priests of Egypt were the pro-
fessors and teachers of science, and were styled priests of Heliopolis,
that is, of the City of the Sun.
The Druids in Europe, who were the same order of men, have
their name from the Teutonic or ancient German language; the Ger-
mans being anciently called Teutons. The word Druid signifies a
wise man. In Persia they were called magi, which signifies the same
thing.
Thomas Paine 260
“Egypt,” says Smith, ”from whence we derive many of our mys-

teries, has always borne a distinguished rank in history, and was once
celebrated above all others for its antiquities, learning, opulence, and
fertility. In their system, their principal hero-gods, Osiris and Isis,
theologically represented the Supreme Being and universal nature;
and physically the two great celestial luminaries, the sun and the
moon, by whose influence all nature was actuated.
“The experienced brethren of the Society” says Smith in a note
to this passage, “are well informed what affinity these symbols bear
to Masonry, and why they are used in all Masonic lodges.”
In speaking of the apparel of the Masons in their lodges, part of
which, as we see in their public processions, is a white leather apron,
he says, “the Druids were appareled in white at the time of their sac-
rifices and solemn offices. The Egyptian priests of Osiris wore
snow-white cotton. The Grecian and most other priests wore white
garments. As Masons, we regard the principles of those who were the
first worshipers of the true God, imitate their apparel, and assume
the badge of innocence.”
“The Egyptians,” continues Smith, “in the earliest ages consti-
tuted a great number of lodges, but with assiduous care kept their se-
crets of Masonry from all strangers. These secrets have been
imperfectly handed down to us by oral tradition only, and ought to be
kept undiscovered to the laborers, craftsmen, and apprentices, till by
good behavior and long study they become better acquainted in ge-
ometry and the liberal arts, and thereby qualified for masters and
wardens, which is seldom or never the case with English Masons.”
Under the head of Freemasonry, written by the astronomer
Lalande, in the French Encyclopedia, I expected from his great
knowledge in astronomy, to have found much information on the ori-
gin of Masonry; for what connection can there be between any insti-
tution and the sun and twelve signs of the zodiac, if there be not
something in that institution, or in its origin, that has reference to as-
tronomy?
Everything used as a hieroglyphic has reference to the subject
and purpose for which it is used, and we are not to suppose the Free-
masons, among whom are many very learned and scientific men, to
be such idiots as to make use of astronomical signs without some as-

tronomical purpose.
But I was much disappointed in my expectation from Lalande.
In speaking of the origin of Masonry, he says, the origin of Masonry,
like many others, loses itself in the obscurity of time. When I came to
this expression, I supposed Lalande a Mason, and on inquiry found
he was. This passing over saved him from the embarrassment which
Masons are under respecting the disclosure of their origin, and which
they are sworn to conceal.
There is a society of Masons in Dublin who take the name of
Druids; these Masons must be supposed to have a reason for taking
that name.
I come now to speak of the cause of secrecy used by the Masons.
The natural source of secrecy is fear. When any new religion
over-runs a former religion, the professors of the new become the
persecutors of the old. We see this in all instances that history brings
before us.
When Hilkiah the priest and Shaphan the scribe, in the reign of
King Josiah, found, or pretended to find, the law, called the law of
Moses, a thousand years after the time of Moses (and it does not ap-
pear from II Kings, xxii, xxiii, that such a law was ever practiced or
known before the time of Josiah) he established that law as a national
religion, and put all the priests of the sun to death.
When the Christian religion over-ran the Jewish religion, the
Jews were the continual subject of persecution in all Christian coun-
tries. When the Protestant religion in England over-ran the Roman
Catholic religion, it was made death for a Catholic priest to be found
in England.
As this has been the case in all the instances we have any knowl-
edge of, we are obliged to admit it with respect to the case in ques-
tion, and that when the Christian religion over-ran the religion of the
Druids in Italy, ancient Gaul, Britain, and Ireland, the Druids became
the subject of persecution.
This would naturally and necessarily oblige such of them as re-
mained attached to their original religion to meet in secret, and under
the strongest injunctions of secrecy. Their safety depended upon it. A
Thomas Paine 262
false brother might expose the lives of many of them to destruction;

and from the remains of the religion of the Druids, thus preserved,
arose the institution which, to avoid the name of Druid, took that of
Mason, and practiced under this new name the rites and ceremonies
of Druids.
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
A DISCOURSE AT THE SOCIETY OF

THEOPHILANTHROPISTS, PARIS
ELIGION has two principal enemies, Fanaticism and Infi-
R delity, or that which is called Atheism. The first requires to
be combated by reason and morality, the other by natural philosophy.
The existence of a God is the first dogma of the Theophilan-
thropists. It is upon this subject that I solicit your attention; for
though it has been often treated of, and that most sublimely, the sub-
ject is inexhaustible; and there will always remain something to be
said that has not been before advanced. I go therefore to open the
subject, and to crave your attention to the end.
The universe is the bible of a true Theophilanthropist. It is there
that he reads of God. It is there that the proofs of his existence are to
be sought and to be found. As to written or printed books, by what-
ever name they are called, they are the works of man’s hands, and
carry no evidence in themselves that God is the author of any of
them. It must be in something that man could not make that we must
seek evidence for our belief, and that something is the universe, the
true Bible – the inimitable work of God.
Contemplating the universe, the whole system of creation, in
this point of light, we shall discover, that all that which is called natu-
ral philosophy is properly a divine study. It is the study of God
through his works. It is the best study, by which we can arrive at a
knowledge of his existence, and the only one by which we can gain a
glimpse of his perfection.
Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immen-
sity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see
it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible
WHOLE is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence?
We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want
Thomas Paine 264
to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abun-

dance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what
GOD is? Search not written or printed books, but the Scripture called
the Creation.
It has been the error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all
the other sciences, and subjects of natural philosophy, as accom-
plishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or
with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the prin-
ciples of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or
contrive principles: he can only discover them; and he ought to look
through the discovery to the author.
When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an as-
tonishing pile of architecture, a well executed statue, or an highly
finished painting, where life and action are imitated, and habit only
prevents our mistaking a surface of light and shade for cubical solid-
ity, our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and
talents of the artist.
When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid.
When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How then is it,
that when we study the works of God in the creation, we stop short,
and do not think of GOD? It is from the error of the schools in having
taught those subjects as accomplishments only, and thereby sepa-
rated the study of them from the Being who is the author of them.
The schools have made the study of theology to consist in the
study of opinions in written or printed books; whereas theology
should be studied in the works or books of the creation. The study of
theology in books of opinions has often produced fanatism, rancour,
and cruelty of temper; and from hence have proceeded the numerous
persecutions, the fanatical quarrels, the religious burnings and mas-
sacres, that have desolated Europe.
But the study of theology in the works of the creation produces a
direct contrary effect. The mind becomes at once enlightened and se-
rene, a copy of the scene it beholds: information and adoration go
hand in hand; and all the social faculties become enlarged.
The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools, in teach-
ing natural philosophy as an accomplishment only, has been that of
generating in the pupils a species of Atheism. Instead of looking

through the works of creation to the Creator himself, they stop short,
and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of his exis-
tence. They labor with studied ingenuity to ascribe everything they
behold to innate properties of matter, and jump over all the rest by
saying, that matter is eternal.
Let us examine this subject; it is worth examining; for if we ex-
amine it through all its cases, the result will be, that the existence of a
SUPERIOR CAUSE, or that which man calls GOD, will be
discoverable by philosophical principles.
In the first place, admitting matter to have properties, as we see
it has, the question still remains, how came matter by those proper-
ties? To this they will answer, that matter possessed those properties
eternally. This is not solution, but assertion; and to deny it is equally
as impossible of proof as to assert it.
It is then necessary to go further; and therefore I say, – if there
exist a circumstance that is not a property of matter, and without
which the universe, or to speak in a limited degree, the solar system
composed of planets and a sun, could not exist a moment, all the ar-
guments of Atheism, drawn from properties of matter, and applied to
account for the universe, will be overthrown, and the existence of a
superior cause, or that which man calls God, becomes discoverable,
as is before said, by natural philosophy.
I go now to show that such a circumstance exists, and what it is.
The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sus-
tained by motion. Motion is not a property of matter, and without this
motion, the solar system could not exist. Were motion a property of
matter, that undiscovered and undiscoverable thing called perpetual
motion would establish itself.
It is because motion is not a property of matter, that perpetual
motion is an impossibility in the hand of every being but that of the
Creator of motion. When the pretenders to Atheism can produce per-
petual motion, and not till then, they may expect to be credited.
The natural state of matter, as to place, is a state of rest. Motion,
or change of place, is the effect of an external cause acting upon mat-
ter. As to that faculty of matter that is called gravitation, it is the in-
Thomas Paine 266
fluence which two or more bodies have reciprocally on each other to

unite and be at rest. Everything which has hitherto been discovered,
with respect to the motion of the planets in the system, relates only to
the laws by which motion acts, and not to the cause of motion.
Gravitation, so far from being the cause of motion to the planets
that compose the solar system, would be the destruction of the solar
system, were revolutionary motion to cease; for as the action of spin-
ning upholds a top, the revolutionary motion upholds the planets in
their orbits, and prevents them from gravitating and forming one
mass with the sun. In one sense of the word, philosophy knows, and
atheism says, that matter is in perpetual motion.
But the motion here meant refers to the state of matter, and that
only on the surface of the earth. It is either decomposition, which is
continually destroying the form of bodies of matter, or recomposi-
tion, which renews that matter in the same or another form, as the de-
composition of animal or vegetable substances enter into the
composition of other bodies.
But the motion that upholds the solar system is of an entire dif-
ferent kind, and is not a property of matter. It operates also to an en-
tire different effect. It operates to perpetual preservation, and to
prevent any change in the state of the system.
Giving then to matter all the properties which philosophy knows
it has, or all that atheism ascribes to it, and can prove, and even sup-
posing matter to be eternal, it will not account for the system of the
universe, or of the solar system, because it will not account for mo-
tion, and it is motion that preserves it.
When, therefore, we discover a circumstance of such immense
importance, that without it the universe could not exist, and for
which neither matter, nor any nor all the properties can account, we
are by necessity forced into the rational conformable belief of the ex-
istence of a cause superior to matter, and that cause man calls GOD.
As to that which is called nature, it is no other than the laws by
which motion and action of every kind, with respect to unintelligible
matter, are regulated. And when we speak of looking through nature
up to nature’s God, we speak philosophically the same rational lan-
guage as when we speak of looking through human laws up to the

power that ordained them.
God is the power of first cause, nature is the law, and matter is
the subject acted upon.
But infidelity, by ascribing every phenomenon to properties of
matter, conceives a system for which it cannot account, and yet it
pretends to demonstration. It reasons from what it sees on the surface
of the earth, but it does not carry itself on the solar system existing by
motion.
It sees upon the surface a perpetual decomposition and
recomposition of matter. It sees that an oak produces an acorn, an
acorn an oak, a bird an egg, an egg a bird, and so on. In things of this
kind it sees something which it calls a natural cause, but none of the
causes it sees is the cause of that motion which preserves the solar
system.
Let us contemplate this wonderful and stupendous system con-
sisting of matter, and existing by motion. It is not matter in a state of
rest, nor in a state of decomposition or recomposition. It is matter
systematized in perpetual orbicular or circular motion. As a system
that motion is the life of it: as animation is life to an animal body, de-
prive the system of motion, and, as a system, it must expire.
Who then breathed into the system the life of motion? What
power impelled the planets to move, since motion is not a property of
the matter of which they are composed? If we contemplate the im-
mense velocity of this motion, our wonder becomes increased, and
our adoration enlarges itself in the same proportion.
To instance only one of the planets, that of the earth we inhabit,
its distance from the sun, the centre of the orbits of all the planets, is,
according to observations of the transit of the planet Venus, about
one hundred million miles; consequently, the diameter of the orbit,
or circle in which the earth moves round the sun, is double that dis-
tance; and the measure of the circumference of the orbit, taken as
three times its diameter, is six hundred million miles. The earth per-
forms this voyage in three hundred and sixty-five days and some
hours, and consequently moves at the rate of more than one million
six hundred thousand miles every twenty-four hours.
Thomas Paine 268
Where will infidelity, where will Atheism, find cause for this as-
tonishing velocity of motion, never ceasing, never varying, and
which is the preservation of the earth in its orbit? It is not by reason-
ing from an acorn to an oak, from an egg to a bird, or from any
change in the state of matter on the surface of the earth, that this can
be accounted for.
Its cause is not to be found in matter, nor in anything we call na-
ture. The Atheist who affects to reason, and the fanatic who rejects
reason, plunge themselves alike into inextricable difficulties.
The one perverts the sublime and enlightening study of natural
philosophy into a deformity of absurdities by not reasoning to the
end. The other loses himself in the obscurity of metaphysical theo-
ries, and dishonors the Creator, by treating the study of his works
with contempt. The one is a half-rational of whom there is some
hope, the other a visionary to whom we must be charitable.
When at first thought we think of a Creator, our ideas appear to
us undefined and confused; but if we reason philosophically, those
ideas can be easily arranged and simplified. It is a Being whose
power is equal to his will.
Observe the nature of the will of man. It is of an infinite quality.
We cannot conceive the possibility of limits to the will. Observe, on
the other hand, how exceedingly limited is his power of acting com-
pared with the nature of his will. Suppose the power equal to the will,
and man would be a God. He would will himself eternal, and be so.
He could will a creation, and could make it.
In this progressive reasoning, we see in the nature of the will of
man half of that which we conceive in thinking of God; add the other
half, and we have the whole idea of a Being who could make the uni-
verse, and sustain it by perpetual motion; because he could create
that motion.
We know nothing of the capacity of the will of animals, but we
know a great deal of the difference of their powers. For example,
how numerous are the degrees, and bow immense is the difference of
power, from a mite to a man.
Since then everything we see below us shows a progression of
power, where is the difficulty in supposing that there is, at the sum-
mit of all things, a Being in whom an infinity of power unites with the
infinity of the will. When this simple idea presents itself to our mind,
we have the idea of a perfect Being, that man calls God.
It is comfortable to live under the belief of the existence of an in-
finite protecting power; and it is an addition to that comfort to know
that such a belief is not a mere conceit of the imagination, as many of
the theories that is called religious are; nor a belief founded only on
tradition or received opinion; but is a belief deducible by the action
of reason upon the things that compose the system of the universe; a
belief arising out of visible facts: and so demonstrable is the truth of
this belief, that if no such belief had existed, the persons who now
controvert it would have been the persons who would have produced
and propagated it; because by beginning to reason they would have
been led to reason progressively to the end, and thereby have discov-
ered that matter and the properties it has will not account for the sys-
tem of the universe, and that there must necessarily be a superior
cause.
It was the excess to which imaginary systems of religion had
been carried, and the intolerance, persecutions, burnings and massa-
cres they occasioned, that first induced certain persons to propagate
infidelity; thinking, that upon the whole it was better not to believe at
all than to believe a multitude of things and complicated creeds that
occasioned so much mischief in the world.
But those days are past, persecution hath ceased, and the anti-
dote then set up against it has no longer even the shadow of apology.
We profess, and we proclaim in peace, the pure, unmixed, comfort-
able, and rational belief of a God, as manifested to us in the universe.
We do this without any apprehension of that belief being made a
cause of persecution as other beliefs have been, or of suffering perse-
cution ourselves. To God, and not to man, are all men to account for
their belief.
It has been well observed, at the first institution of this Society,
that the dogmas it professes to believe are from the commencement
of the world; that they are not novelties, but are confessedly the basis
of all systems of religion, however numerous and contradictory they
may be.
Thomas Paine 270
All men in the outset of the religion they profess are Theophi-
lanthropists. It is impossible to form any system of religion without
building upon those principles, and therefore they are not sectarian
principles, unless we suppose a sect composed of all the world.
I have said in the course of this discourse, that the study of natu-
ral philosophy is a divine study, because it is the study of the works
of God in the creation. If we consider theology upon this ground,
what an extensive field of improvement in things both divine and hu-
man opens itself before us!
All the principles of science are of divine origin. It was not man
that invented the principles on which astronomy, and every branch of
mathematics, are founded and studied. It was not man that gave
properties to the circle and the triangle. Those principles are eternal
and immutable.
We see in them the unchangeable nature of the Divinity. We see
in them immortality, an immortality existing after the material fig-
ures that express those properties are dissolved in dust.
The Society is at present in its infancy, and its means are small;
but I wish to hold in view the subject I allude to, and instead of teach-
ing the philosophical branches of learning as ornamental accom-
plishments only, as they have hitherto been taught, to teach them in a
manner that shall combine theological knowledge with scientific in-
struction.
To do this to the best advantage, some instruments will be neces-
sary, for the purpose of explanation, of which the Society is not yet
possessed. But as the views of this Society extend to public good as
well as to that of the individual, and as its principles can have no ene-
mies, means may be devised to procure them.
If we unite to the present instruction a series of lectures on the
ground I have mentioned, we shall, in the first place, render theology
the most delightful and entertaining of all studies. In the next place
we shall give scientific instruction to those who could not otherwise
obtain it. The mechanic of every profession will there be taught the
mathematical principles necessary to render him a proficient in his
art; the cultivator will there see developed the principles of vegeta-
tion; while, at the same time, they will be led to see the hand of God
in all these things.
EXTRACT FROM A REPLY
TO THE BISHOP OF
LLANDAFF
GENESIS
he bishop says, “the oldest book in the world is Genesis.”
T This is mere assertion; he offers no proof of it, and I go to
controvert it, and to show that the book of job, which is not a Hebrew
book, but is a book of the Gentiles translated into Hebrew, is much
older than the book of Genesis.
The book of Genesis means the book of Generations; to which
are prefixed two chapters, the first and second, which contain two
different cosmogonies, that is, two different accounts of the creation
of the world, written by different persons, as I have shown in the pre-
ceding part of this work.
The first cosmogony begins at chapter i. 1, and ends at ii. 3; for
the adverbial conjunction thus, with which chapter ii. begins, shows
those three verses to belong to chapter i. The second cosmogony be-
gins at ii. 4, and ends with that chapter.
In the first cosmogony the name of God is used without any epi-
thet joined to it, and is repeated thirty-five times. In the second cos-
mogony it is always the Lord God, which is repeated eleven times.
These two different styles of expression show these two chapters to
be the work of two different persons, and the contradictions they
contain, show they cannot be the work of one and the same person, as
I have already shown.
The third chapter, in which the style of Lord God is continued in
every instance except in the supposed conversation between the
woman and the serpent (for in every place in that chapter where the
Thomas Paine 272
writer speaks, it is always the Lord God) shows this chapter to be-
long to the second cosmogony.
This chapter gives an account of what is called the fall of man,
which is no other than a fable borrowed from, and constructed upon,
the religious allegory of Zoroaster, or the Persians, of the annual
progress of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac. It is the
fall of the year, the approach and evil of winter, announced by the as-
cension of the autumnal constellation of the serpent of the zodiac,
and not the moral fall of man, that is the key of the allegory, and of
the fable in Genesis borrowed from it.
The fall of man in Genesis is said to have been produced by eat-
ing a certain fruit, generally taken to be an apple. The fall of the year
is the season for the gathering and eating the new apples of that year.
The allegory, therefore, holds with respect to the fruit, which it
would not have done had it been an early summer fruit. It holds also
with respect to place.
The tree is said to have been placed in the midst of the garden.
But why in the midst of the garden more than in any other place? The
solution of the allegory gives the answer to this question, which is,
that the fall of the year, when apples and other autumnal fruits are
ripe, and when days and nights are of equal length, is the mid-season
between summer and winter.
It holds also with respect to clothing, and the temperature of the
air. It is said in Genesis (iii. 21), “Unto Adam and his wife did the
Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.” But why are coats
of skins mentioned? This cannot be understood as referring to any-
thing of the nature of moral evil. The solution of the allegory gives
again the answer to this question, which is, that the evil of winter,
which follows the fall of the year, fabulously called in Genesis the
fall of man, makes warm clothing necessary.
But of these things I shall speak fully when I come in another
part to treat of the ancient religion of the Persians, and compare it
with the modern religion of the New Testament. At present, I shall
confine myself to the comparative antiquity of the books of Genesis
and Job, taking, at the same time, whatever I may find in my way
with respect to the fabulousness of the book of Genesis; for if what is
called the fall of man, in Genesis, be fabulous or allegorical, that
which is called the redemption in the New Testament cannot be a

fact. It is logically impossible, and impossible also in the nature of
things, that moral good can redeem physical evil. I return to the
bishop.
If Genesis be, as the bishop asserts, the oldest book in the world,
and, consequently, the oldest and first written book of the Bible, and
if the extraordinary things related in it; such as the creation of the
world in six days, the tree of life, and of good and evil, the story of
Eve and the talking serpent, the fall of man and his being turned out
of Paradise, were facts, or even believed by the Jews to be facts, they
would be referred to as fundamental matters, and that very fre-
quently, in the books of the Bible that were written by various au-
thors afterwards; whereas, there is not a book, chapter, or verse of the
Bible, from the time that Moses is said to have written the book of
Genesis, to the book of Malachi, the last book in the Bible, including
a space of more than a thousand years, in which there is any mention
made of these things, or any of them, nor are they so much as alluded
to. How will the bishop solve this difficulty, which stands as a cir-
cumstantial contradiction to his assertion?
There are but two ways of solving it:
First, that the book of Genesis is not an ancient book, that it has
been written by some (now) unknown person, after the return of the
Jews from the Babylonian captivity, about a thousand years after the
time that Moses is said to have lived, and put as a preface or intro-
duction to the other books when they were formed into a canon in the
time of the second temple, and therefore not having existed before
that time, none of these things mentioned in it could be referred to in
those books.
Secondly, that admitting Genesis to have been written by Mo-
ses, the Jews did not believe the things stated in it to be true, and
therefore, as they could not refer to them as facts, they would not re-
fer to them as fables. The first of these solutions goes against the an-
tiquity of the book, and the second against its authenticity; and the
bishop may take which he please.
But be the author of Genesis whoever it may, there is abundant
evidence to show, as well from the early Christian writers as from the
Jews themselves, that the things stated in that book were not believed
Thomas Paine 274
to be facts. Why they have been believed as facts since that time,
when better and fuller knowledge existed on the case than is known
now, can be accounted for only on the imposition of priestcraft.
Augustine, one of the early champions of the Christian Church,
acknowledges in his “City of God” that the adventure of Eve and the
serpent, and the account of Paradise, were generally considered as
fiction or allegory. He regards them as allegory himself, without at-
tempting to give any explanation, but he supposes that a better expla-
nation might be found than those that had been offered.
Origen, another early champion of the Church, says, “What man
of good sense can ever persuade himself that there were a first, a sec-
ond, and a third day, and that each of these days had a night when
there were yet neither sun, moon, nor stars? What man can be stupid
enough to believe that God, acting the part of a gardener, had planted
a garden in the East, that the tree of life was a real tree, and that its
fruit had the virtue of making those who eat of it live forever?”
Maimonides, one of the most learned and celebrated of the Jew-
ish rabbins, who lived in the Eleventh Century (about seven or eight
hundred years ago) and to whom the bishop refers in his answer to
me, is very explicit in his book entitled “Moreh Nebuchim,” upon
the non-reality of the things stated in the account of the creation in
the book of Genesis.
“We ought not,” (says he) “to understand, nor take according to
the letter, that which is written in the book of the creation; nor to have
the same ideas of it which common men have; otherwise our ancient
sages would not have recommended with so much care to conceal
the sense of it, and not to raise the allegorical veil which envelopes
the truths it contains.
“The book of Genesis, taken according to the letter, gives the
most absurd and the most extravagant ideas of the Divinity. Whoever
shall find out the sense of it, ought to restrain himself from divulging
it. It is a maxim which all our sages repeat, and above all with respect
to the work of six days.
“It may happen that someone, with the aid he may borrow from
others, may hit upon the meaning of it. In that case he ought to im-
pose silence upon himself; or if he speak of it, he ought to speak ob-
scurely, and in an enigmatical manner, as I do myself, leaving the rest

to be found out by those who can understand me.”
This is, certainly, a very extraordinary declaration of
Maimonides, taking all the parts of it. First, be declares, that the ac-
count of the Creation in the book of Genesis is not a fact, and that to
believe it to be a fact gives the most absurd and the most extravagant
ideas of the Divinity. Secondly, that it is an allegory. Thirdly, that the
allegory has a concealed secret. Fourthly, that whoever can find the
secret ought not to tell it.
It is this last part that is the most extraordinary. Why all this care
of the Jewish rabbins, to prevent what they call the concealed mean-
ing, or the secret, from being known, and if known to prevent any of
their people from telling it? It certainly must be something which the
Jewish nation are afraid or ashamed the world should know.
It must be something personal to them as a people, and not a se-
cret of a divine nature, which the more it is known the more it in-
creases the glory of the creator, and the gratitude and happiness of
man. It is not God’s secret but their own they are keeping. I go to un-
veil the secret.
The case is, the Jews have stolen their cosmogony, that is, their
account of the Creation, from the cosmogony of the Persians, con-
tained in the books of Zoroaster, the Persian lawgiver, and brought
it with them when they returned from captivity by the benevolence of
Cyrus, King of Persia. For it is evident, from the silence of all the
books of the Bible upon the subject of the Creation, that the Jews had
no cosmogony before that time.
If they had a cosmogony from the time of Moses, some of their
judges who governed during more than four hundred years, or of
their kings, the Davids and Solomons of their day, who governed
nearly five hundred years, or of their prophets and psalmists, who
lived in the mean time, would have mentioned it.
It would, either as fact or fable, have been the grandest of all
subjects for a psalm. It would have suited to a tittle the ranting poeti-
cal genius of Isaiah, or served as a cordial to the gloomy Jeremiah.
But not one word, not even a whisper, does any of the bible authors
give upon the subject.
Thomas Paine 276
To conceal the theft, the rabbins of the second temple have pub-
lished Genesis as a book of Moses, and have enjoined secrecy to all
their people, who by travelling or otherwise might happen to dis-
cover from whence the cosmogony was borrowed, not to tell it. The
evidence of circumstances is often unanswerable, and there is no
other than this which I have given that goes to the whole of the case,
and this does.
Diogenes Laertius, an ancient and respectable author, whom the
bishop in his answer to me quotes on another occasion, has a passage
that corresponds with the solution here given. In speaking of the reli-
gion of the Persians as promulgated by their priests or magi, he says
the Jewish rabbins were the successors of their doctrine.
Having thus spoken on the plagiarism, and on the non-reality of
the book of Genesis, I will give some additional evidence that Moses
is not the author of that book.
Aben-Ezra, a celebrated Jewish author, who lived about seven
hundred years ago, and whom the bishop allows to have been a man
of great erudition, has made a great many observations, too numer-
ous to be repeated here, to show that Moses was not, and could not
be, the author of the book of Genesis, nor of any of the five books
that bear his name.
Spinoza, another learned Jew, who lived about a hundred and
thirty years ago, recites, in his treatise on the ceremonies of the Jews,
ancient and modern, the observations of Aben-Ezra, to which he
adds many others, to shew that Moses is not the author of those
books.
He also says, and shows his reasons for saying it, that the Bible
did not exist as a book till the time of the Maccabees, which was
more than a hundred years after the return of the Jews from the Baby-
lonian captivity.
In the second part of the “Age of Reason,” I have, among other
things, referred to nine verses in Genesis xxxvi, beginning at verse
31 (These are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned
any king over the children of Israel,) which it is impossible could
have been written by Moses, or in the time of Moses, and which
could not have been written till after the Jew kings began to reign in
Israel, which was not till several hundred years after the time of Mo-
ses.
The bishop allows this, and says “I think you say true.” But he
then quibbles, and says, that “a small addition to a book does not de-
stroy either the genuineness or authenticity of the whole book.” This
is priestcraft. These verses do not stand in the book as an addition to
it, but as making a part of the whole book, and which it is impossible
that Moses could write.
The bishop would reject the antiquity of any other book if it
could be proved from the words of the book itself that a part of it
could not have been written till several hundred years after the re-
puted author of it was dead. He would call such a book a forgery. I am
authorized, therefore, to call the book of Genesis a forgery.
Combining, then, all the foregoing circumstances together, re-
specting the antiquity and authenticity of the book of Genesis, a con-
clusion will naturally follow therefrom. Those circumstances are:
First, that certain parts of the book cannot possibly have been
written by Moses, and that the other parts carry no evidence of hav-
ing been written by him.
Secondly, the universal silence of all the following books of the
Bible, for about a thousand years, upon the extraordinary things spo-
ken of in Genesis, such as the creation of the world in six days – the
garden of Eden – the tree of knowledge – the tree of life – the story of
Eve and the serpent – the fall of man and of his being turned out of
this fine garden, together with Noah’s flood, and the tower of Babel.
Thirdly, the silence of all the books of the Bible upon even the
name of Moses, from the book of Joshua until the second book of
Kings, which was not written till after the captivity, for it gives an ac-
count of the captivity, a period of about a thousand years.
Strange that a man who is proclaimed as the historian of the Cre-
ation, the privy-counsellor and confidant of the Almighty – the legis-
lator of the Jewish nation and the founder of its religion; strange, I
say, that even the name of such a man should not find a place in their
books for a thousand years, if they knew or believed anything about
him or the books he is said to have written.
Thomas Paine 278
Fourthly, the opinion of some of the most celebrated of the Jew-

ish commentators that Moses is not the author of the book of Gene-
sis, founded on the reasons given for that opinion.
Fifthly, the opinion of the early Christian writers, and of the
great champion of Jewish literature, Maimonides, that the book of
Genesis is not a book of facts.
Sixthly, the silence imposed by all the Jewish rabbins, and by
Maimonides himself, upon the Jewish nation, not to speak of any-
thing they may happen to know or discover respecting the cosmog-
ony (or creation of the world) in the book of Genesis.
From these circumstances the following conclusions offer:
First, that the book of Genesis is not a book of facts.
Secondly, that as no mention is made throughout the Bible of
any of the extraordinary things related in [it], Genesis has not been
written till after the other books were written, and put as a preface to
the Bible. Everyone knows that a preface to a book, though it stands
first, is the last written.
Thirdly, that the silence imposed by all the Jewish rabbins and
by Maimonides upon the Jewish nation, to keep silence upon every-
thing related in their cosmogony, evinces a secret they are not willing
should be known.
The secret therefore explains itself to be, that when the Jews
were in captivity in Babylon and Persia they became acquainted with
the cosmogony of the Persians, as registered in the Zend-Avesta of
Zoroaster, the Persian lawgiver, which, after their return from cap-
tivity, they manufactured and modeled as their own, and ante-dated it
by giving to it the name of Moses. The case admits of no other expla-
nation.
From all which it appears that the book of Genesis, instead of
being the oldest book in the world, as the bishop calls it, has been the
last written book of the Bible, and that the cosmogony it contains has
been manufactured.
OF THE NAMES IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS

Everything in Genesis serves as evidence or symptom that the
book has been composed in some late period of the Jewish nation.
Even the names mentioned in it serve to this purpose.
Nothing is more common or more natural than to name the chil-
dren of succeeding generations after the names of those who had
been celebrated in some former generation. This holds good with re-
spect to all the people and all the histories we know of, and it does
not hold good with the Bible. There must be some cause for this.
This book of Genesis tells us of a man whom it calls Adam, and
of his sons Abel and Seth; of Enoch, who lived three hundred and
sixty-five years (it is exactly the number of days in a year), and that
then God took him up. (It has the appearance of being taken from
some allegory of the Gentiles on the commencement and termination
of the year, by the progress of the sun through the twelve signs of the
zodiac, on which the allegorical religion of the Gentiles was
founded.)
It tells us of Methuselah who lived 969 years, and of a long train
of other names in the fifth chapter. It then passes on to a man whom it
calls Noah, and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet; then to Lot, Abra-
ham, Isaac, and Jacob and his sons, with which the book of Genesis
finishes.
All these, according to the account given in that book, were the
most extraordinary and celebrated of men. They were moreover
heads of families. Adam was the father of the world. Enoch, for his
righteousness, was taken up to heaven. Methuselah lived to almost a
thousand years. He was the son of Enoch, the man of 365, the num-
ber of days in a year. It has the appearance of being the continuation
of an allegory on the 365 days of the year, and its abundant produc-
tions.
Noah was selected from all the world to be preserved when it
was drowned, and became the second father of the world. Abraham
was the father of the faithful multitude. Isaac and Jacob were the in-
heritors of his fame, and the last was the father of the twelve tribes.
Thomas Paine 280
Now, if these very wonderful men and their names, and the book
that records them, had been known by the Jews before the Babylo-
nian captivity, those names would have been as common among the
Jews before that period as they have been since. We now hear of
thousands of Abrahams, Isaacs, and Jacobs among the Jews, but
there were none of that name before the Babylonian captivity. The
Bible does not mention one, though from the time that Abraham is
said to have lived to the time of the Babylonian captivity is about
1,400 years.
How is it to be accounted for, that there have been so many thou-
sands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Jews of the names of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob since that period, and not one before?
It can be accounted for but one way, which is, that before the
Babylonian captivity the Jews had no such book as Genesis, nor
knew anything of the names and persons it mentions, nor of the
things it relates, and that the stories in it have been manufactured
since that time. From the Arabic name Ibrahim (which is the manner
the Turks write that name to this day) the Jews have, most probably,
manufactured their Abraham.
I will advance my observations a point further, and speak of the
names of Moses and Aaron, mentioned for the first time in the book
of Exodus. There are now, and have continued to be from the time of
the Babylonian captivity, or soon after it, thousands of Jews of the
names of Moses and Aaron, and we read not of any of that name be-
fore that time. The Bible does not mention one.
The direct inference from this is, that the Jews knew of no such
book as Exodus before the Babylonian captivity. In fact, that it did
not exist before that time, and that it is only since the book has been
invented that the names of Moses and Aaron have been common
among the Jews.
It is applicable to the purpose to observe, that the picturesque
work, called Mosaic-work, spelled the same as you would say the
Mosaic account of the creation, is not derived from the word Moses
but from Muses (the Muses,) because of the variegated and pictur-
esque pavement in the temples dedicated to the Muses. This carries a
strong implication that the name Moses is drawn from the same
source, and that he is not a real but an allegorical person, as
Maimonides describes what is called the Mosaic account of the Cre-

ation to be.
I will go a point still further. The Jews now know the book of
Genesis, and the names of all the persons mentioned in the first ten
chapters of that book, from Adam to Noah: yet we do not hear (I
speak for myself) of any Jew of the present day, of the name of
Adam, Abel, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Shem, Ham, or Japhet,
(names mentioned in the first ten chapters), though these were, ac-
cording to the account in that book, the most extraordinary of all the
names that make up the catalogue of the Jewish chronology.
The names the Jews now adopt, are those that are mentioned in
Genesis after the tenth chapter, as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc. How
then does it happen that they do not adopt the names found in the first
ten chapters? Here is evidently a line of division drawn between the
first ten chapters of Genesis and the remaining chapters, with respect
to the adoption of names. There must be some cause for this, and I go
to offer a solution of the problem.
The reader will recollect the quotation I have already made from
the Jewish rabbin, Maimonides, wherein he says, “We ought not to
understand nor to take according to the letter that which is written in
the book of the Creation. . . . It is a maxim (says he) which all our
sages repeat, above all with respect to the work of six days.” The
qualifying expression above all implies there are other parts of the
book, though not so important, that ought not to be understood or
taken according to the letter, and as the Jews do not adopt the names
mentioned in the first ten chapters, it appears evident those chapters
are included in the injunction not to take them in a literal sense, or ac-
cording to the letter.
From which it follows, that the persons or characters mentioned
in the first ten chapters, as Adam, Abel, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah,
and so on to Noah, are not real, but fictitious or allegorical persons,
and therefore the Jews do not adopt their names into their families. If
they affixed the same idea of reality to them as they do to those that
follow after the tenth chapter, the names of Adam, Abel, Seth, etc.,
would be as common among the Jews of the present day as are those
of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Aaron.
Thomas Paine 282
In the superstition they have been in, scarcely a Jew family

would have been without an Enoch, as a presage of his going to
Heaven as ambassador for the whole family. Every mother who
wished that the days of her son might be long in the land would call
him Methuselah; and all the Jews that might have to traverse the
ocean would be named Noah, as a charm against shipwreck and
drowning.
This is domestic evidence against the book of Genesis, which,
joined to the several kinds of evidence before recited, show the book
of Genesis not to be older than the Babylonian captivity, and to be
fictitious. I proceed to fix the character and antiquity of the book of
Job.
The book of Job has not the least appearance of being a book of
the Jews, and though printed among the books of the Bible, does not
belong to it. There is no reference to it in any Jewish law or cere-
mony. On the contrary, all the internal evidence it contains shows it
to be a book of the Gentiles, either of Persia or Chaldea.
The name of Job does not appear to be a Jewish name. There is
no Jew of that name in any of the books of the Bible, neither is there
now that I ever heard of. The country where Job is said or supposed
to have lived, or rather where the scene of the drama is laid, is called
Uz, and there was no place of that name ever belonging to the Jews.
If Uz is the same as Ur, it was in Chaldea, the country of the Gen-
tiles.
The Jews can give no account how they came by this book, nor
who was the author, nor the time when it was written. Origen, in his
work against Celsus, (in the first ages of the Christian church,) says
that the book of Job is older than Moses. Aben- Ezra, the Jewish
commentator, whom (as I have before said) the bishop allows to have
been a man of great erudition, and who certainly understood his own
language, says that the book of Job has been translated from another
language into Hebrew.
Spinoza, another Jewish commentator of great learning, con-
firms the opinion of Aben-Ezra, and says moreover, “Je crois que
Job etait Gentil;”* “I believe that Job was a Gentile.”
* Spinoza on the Ceremonies of the Jews, p. 296, published in French at

Amsterdam, 1678.
The bishop, (in answer to me), says, that “the structure of the
whole book of Job, in whatever light of history or drama it be consid-
ered, is founded on the belief that prevailed with the Persians and
Chaldeans, and other Gentile nations, of a good and an evil spirit.”
In speaking of the good and evil spirit of the Persians, the bishop
writes them Arimanius and Oromasdes. I will not dispute about the
orthography, because I know that translated names are differently
spelled in different languages. But he has nevertheless made a capi-
tal error. He has put the devil first; for Arimanius, or, as it is more
generally written, Ahriman, is the evil spirit, and Oromasdes or
Ormusd the good spirit.
He has made the same mistake in the same paragraph, in speak-
ing of the good and evil spirit of the ancient Egyptians, Osiris and
Typho; he puts Typho before Osiris. The error is just the same as if
the bishop in writing about the Christian religion, or in preaching a
sermon, were to say the Devil and God.
A priest ought to know his own trade better. We agree, however,
about the structure of the book of Job, that it is Gentile. I have said in
the second part of the “Age of Reason,” and given my reasons for it,
that the drama of it is not Hebrew.
From the Testimonies I have cited, that of Origen, who, about
fourteen hundred years ago, said that the book of Job was more an-
cient than Moses, that of Aben-Ezra who, in his commentary on Job,
says it has been translated from another language (and consequently
from a Gentile language) into Hebrew; that of Spinoza, who not only
says the same thing, but that the author of it was a Gentile; and that of
the bishop, who says that the structure of the whole book is Gentile;
it follows, in the first place, that the book of Job is not a book of the
Jews originally.
Then, in order to determine to what people or nation any book of
religion belongs, we must compare it with the leading dogmas and
precepts of that people or nation; and therefore, upon the bishop’s
own construction, the book of Job belongs either to the ancient Per-
sians, the Chaldeans, or the Egyptians; because the structure of it is
consistent with the dogma they held, that of a good and an evil spirit,
called in Job God and Satan, existing as distinct and separate beings,
and it is not consistent with any dogma of the Jews.
Thomas Paine 284
The belief of a good and an evil spirit, existing as distinct and

separate beings, is not a dogma to be found in any of the books of the
Bible. It is not till we come to the New Testament that we hear of any
such dogma. There the person called the Son of God, holds conversa-
tion with Satan on a mountain, as familiarly as is represented in the
drama of Job. Consequently the bishop cannot say, in this respect,
that the New Testament is founded upon the Old.
According to the Old, the God of the Jews was the God of every-
thing. All good and evil came from him. According to Exodus it was
God, and not the devil, that hardened Pharaoh’s heart. According to
the book of Samuel, it was an evil spirit from God that troubled Saul.
And Ezekiel makes God to say, in speaking of the Jews, “I gave them
the statutes that were not good, and judgments by which they should
not live.”
The Bible describes the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in
such a contradictory manner, and under such a twofold character,
there would be no knowing when He was in earnest and when in
irony; when to believe, and when not.
As to the precepts, principles, and maxims in the book of Job,
they show that the people abusively called the heathen in the books
of the Jews, had the most sublime ideas of the Creator, and the most
exalted devotional morality. It was the Jews who dishonored God. It
was the Gentiles who glorified Him.
As to the fabulous personifications introduced by the Greek and
Latin poets, it was a corruption of the ancient religion of the Gen-
tiles, which consisted in the adoration of a first cause of the works of
the creation, in which the sun was the great visible agent. It appears
to have been a religion of gratitude and adoration, and not of prayer
and discontented solicitation.
In Job we find adoration and submission, but not prayer. Even
the Ten Commandments enjoin not prayer. Prayer has been added to
devotion by the Church of Rome, as the instrument of fees and per-
quisites.
All prayers by the priests of the Christian Church, whether pub-
lic or private, must be paid for. It may be right, individually, to pray
for virtues, or mental instruction, but not for things. It is an attempt to
dictate to the Almighty in the government of the world. – But to re-

turn to the book of Job.
As the book of Job decides itself to be a book of the Gentiles, the
next thing is to find out to what particular nation it belongs, and
lastly, what is its antiquity.
As a composition, it is sublime, beautiful, and scientific: full of
sentiment, and abounding in grand metaphorical description. As a
drama it is regular. The dramatis personas, the persons performing
the several parts, are regularly introduced, and speak without inter-
ruption or confusion. The scene, as I have before said, is laid in the
country of the Gentiles, and the unities, though not always necessary
in a drama, are observed here as strictly as the subject would admit.
In the last act, where the Almighty is introduced as speaking
from the whirlwind, to decide the controversy between Job and his
friends, it is an idea as grand as poetical imagination can conceive.
What follows of Job’s future prosperity does not belong to it as a
drama. It is an epilogue of the writer, as the first verses of the first
chapter, which gave an account of Job, his country and his riches, are
the prologue.
The book carries the appearance of being the work of some of
the Persian magi, not only because the structure of it corresponds to
the dogma of the religion of those people, as founded by Zoroaster,
but from the astronomical references in it to the constellations of the
zodiac and other objects in the heavens, of which the sun, in their re-
ligion called Mithra, was the chief.
Job, in describing the power of God, (ix. 7-9), says, “Who
commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up the stars. Who
alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the
sea. Who maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of
the south.” All this astronomical allusion is consistent with the reli-
gion of the Persians.
Establishing then the book of Job as the work of some of the Per-
sian or Eastern magi, the case naturally follows that when the Jews
returned from captivity, by the permission of Cyrus King of Persia,
they brought this book with them, had it translated into Hebrew, and
put into their scriptural canons, which were not formed till after their
Thomas Paine 286
return. This will account for the name of Job being mentioned in
Ezekiel, (xiv. 14), who was one of the captives, and also for its not
being mentioned in any book said or supposed to have been written
before the captivity.
Among the astronomical allusions in the book, there is one
which serves to fix its antiquity. It is that where God is made to say to
Job, in the style of reprimand, “Canst thou bind the sweet influences
of Pleiades.” (xxxviii. 31). As the explanation of this depends upon
astronomical calculation, I will, for the sake of those who would not
otherwise understand it, endeavor to explain it as clearly as the sub-
ject will admit.
The Pleiades are a cluster of pale, milky stars, about the size of a
man’s hand, in the constellation Taurus, or in English, the Bull. It is
one of the constellations of the zodiac, of which there are twelve, an-
swering to the twelve months of the year. The Pleiades are visible in
the winter nights, but not in the summer nights, being then below the
horizon.
The zodiac is an imaginary belt or circle in the heavens, eigh-
teen degrees broad, in which the sun apparently makes his annual
course, and in which all the planets move. When the sun appears to
our view to be between us and the group of stars forming such or
such a constellation, he is said to be in that constellation. Conse-
quently the constellations he appears to be in, in the summer, are di-
rectly opposite to those he appeared in in the winter, and the same
with respect to spring and autumn.
The zodiac, besides being divided into twelve constellations, is
also, like every other circle, great or small, divided into 360 equal
parts, called degrees; consequently each constellation contains 30
degrees. The constellations of the zodiac are generally called signs,
to distinguish them from the constellations that are placed out of the
zodiac, and this is the name I shall now use.
The procession of the Equinoxes is the part most difficult to ex-
plain, and it is on this that the explanation chiefly depends.
The Equinoxes correspond to the two seasons of the year when
the sun makes equal day and night.
SABBATH OR SUNDAY
The seventh day, or more properly speaking the period of seven
days, was originally a numerical division of time and nothing more;
and had the bishop been acquainted with the history of astronomy, he
would have known this. The annual revolution of the earth makes
what we call a year. The year is artificially divided into months, the
months into weeks of seven days, the days into hours, etc. The period
of seven days, like any other of the artificial divisions of the year, is
only a fractional part thereof, contrived for the convenience of coun-
tries. It is ignorance, imposition, and priest-craft, that have called it
otherwise.
They might as well talk of the Lord’s month, of the Lord’s
week, of the Lord’s hour, as of the Lord’s day. All time is His, and no
part of it is more holy or more sacred than another. It is, however,
necessary to the trade of a priest, that he should preach up a distinc-
tion of days.
Before the science of astronomy was studied and carried to the
degree of eminence to which it was by the Egyptians and Chaldeans,
the people of those times had no other helps than what common ob-
servation of the very visible changes of the sun and moon afforded,
to enable them to keep an account of the progress of time.
As far as history establishes the point, the Egyptians were the
first people who divided the year into twelve months. Herodotus,
who lived above 2,200 years ago, and is the most ancient historian
whose works have reached our time, says, they did this by the knowl-
edge they had of the stars.
As to the Jews, there is not one single improvement in any sci-
ence or in any scientific art that they ever produced. They were the
most ignorant of all the illiterate world. If the word of the Lord had
come to them, as they pretend, and as the bishop professes to believe,
and that they were to be the harbingers of it to the rest of the world,
the Lord would have taught them the use of letters, and the art of
printing; for without the means of communicating the word, it could
not be communicated; whereas letters were the invention of the Gen-
tile world, and printing of the modern world. But to return to my sub-
ject –
Thomas Paine 288
Before the helps which the science of astronomy afforded, the

people, as before said, had no other whereby to keep an account of
the progress of time, than what the common and very visible changes
of the sun and moon afforded. They saw that a great number of days
made a year, but the account of them was too tedious and too difficult
to be kept numerically, from one to three hundred and sixty-five; nei-
ther did they know the true time of a solar year.
It therefore became necessary, for the purpose of marking the
progress of days, to put them into small parcels, such as are now
called weeks; and which consisted as they now do of seven days.
By this means the memory was assisted as it is with us at this
day; for we do not say of anything that is past, that it was fifty, sixty,
or seventy days ago, but that it was so many weeks, or, if longer time,
so many months. It is impossible to keep an account of time without
helps of this kind.
Julian Scaliger, the inventor of the Julian period of 7,980 years,
produced by multiplying the cycle of the moon, the cycle of the sun,
and the years of an indiction, 19, 28, 15, into each other, says that the
custom of reckoning by periods of seven days was used by the
Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Hebrews, the people of India, the
Arabs, and by all the nations of the East.
In addition to what Scaliger says, it is evident that in Britain, in
Germany, and the north of Europe, they reckoned by periods of
seven days long before the book called the Bible was known in those
parts; and, consequently, that they did not take that mode of reckon-
ing from anything written in that book.
That they reckoned by periods of seven days is evident from
their having seven names and no more for the several days; and
which have not the most distant relation to anything in the book of
Genesis, or to that which is called the fourth commandment.
Those names are still retained in England, with no other alter-
ation than what has been produced by molding the Saxon and Danish
languages into modern English:
1. Sun-day from Sunne the sun, and dag, day, Saxon. Sondag,
Danish. The day dedicated to the sun.
2. Monday, that is, moonday, from Mona, the moon Saxon.

Moano, Danish. Day dedicated to the moon.
3. Tuesday, that is Tuisco’s-day. The day dedicated to the idol
Tuisco.
4. Wednes-day, that is Woden’s-day. The day dedicated to
Woden, the Mars of the Germans.
5. Thursday, that is Thor’s-day, dedicated to the Idol Thor.
6. Friday, that is Friga’s-day. The day dedicated to Friga, the
Venus of the Saxons.
7. Saturday from Seaten (Saturn) an idol of the Saxons; one of
the emblems representing time, which continually terminates and re-
news itself; the last day of the period of seven days.
When we see a certain mode of reckoning general among na-
tions totally unconnected, differing from each other in religion and
in government, and some of them unknown to each other, we may be
certain that it arises from some natural and common cause, prevail-
ing alike over all, and which strikes everyone in the same manner.
Thus all nations have reckoned arithmetically by tens, because
the people of all nations have ten fingers. If they had more or less
than ten, the mode of arithmetical reckoning would have followed
that number, for the fingers are a natural numeration table to all the
world. I now come to show why the period of seven days is so gener-
ally adopted.
Though the sun is the great luminary of the world, and the ani-
mating cause of all the fruits of the earth, the moon by renewing her-
self more than twelve times oftener than the sun, which does it but
once a year, served the rustic world as a natural almanac, as the fin-
gers served it for a numeration table.
All the world could see the moon, her changes, and her monthly
revolutions; and their mode of reckoning time was accommodated,
as nearly as could possibly be done in round numbers, to agree with
the changes of that planet, their natural almanac. The moon performs
her natural revolution round the earth in twenty-nine days and a half.
She goes from a new moon to a half moon, to a full moon, to a half
moon gibbous or convex, and then to a new moon again.
Thomas Paine 290
Each of these changes is performed in seven days and nine

hours; but seven days is the nearest division in round numbers that
could be taken; and this was sufficient to suggest the universal cus-
tom of reckoning by periods of seven days, since it is impossible to
reckon time without some stated period.
How the odd hours could be disposed of without interfering
with the regular periods of seven days, in case the ancients recom-
menced a new Septenary period with every new moon, required no
more difficulty than it did to regulate the Egyptian calendar after-
wards of twelve months of thirty days each, or the odd hour in the
Julian calendar, or the odd days and hours in the French calendar. In
all cases it is done by the addition of complementary days; and it can
be done in no otherwise.
The bishop knows that as the solar year does not end at the ter-
mination of what we call a day, but runs some hours into the next day,
as the quarter of the moon runs some hours beyond seven days; that it
is impossible to give the year any fixed number of days that will not
in course of years become wrong, and make a complementary time
necessary to keep the nominal year parallel with the solar year.
The same must have been the case with those who regulated
time formerly by lunar revolutions. They would have to add three
days to every second moon, or in that proportion, in order to make
the new moon and the new week commence together, like the nomi-
nal year and the solar year.
Diodorus of Sicily, who, as before said, lived before Christ was
born, in giving an account of times much anterior to his own, speaks
of years of three months, of four months, and of six months. These
could be of no other than years composed of lunar revolutions, and
therefore, to bring the several periods of seven days to agree with
such years, there must have been complementary days.
The moon was the first almanac the world knew; and the only
one which the face of the heavens afforded to common spectators.
Her changes and her revolutions have entered into all the calendars
that have been known in the known world.
The division of the year into twelve months, which, as before
shown, was first done by the Egyptians, though arranged with astro-
nomical knowledge, had reference to the twelve moons, or more

properly speaking to the twelve lunar revolutions, that appear in the
space of a solar year; as the period of seven days had reference to one
revolution of the moon.
The feasts of the Jews were, and those of the Christian Church
still are, regulated by the moon. The Jews observed the feasts of the
new moon and full moon, and therefore the period of seven days was
necessary to them.
All the feasts of the Christian Church are regulated by the moon.
That called Easter governs all the rest, and the moon governs Easter.
It is always the first Sunday after the first full moon that happens af-
ter the vernal Equinox, or twenty-first of March.
In proportion as the science of astronomy was studied and im-
proved by the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and the solar year regulated
by astronomical observations, the custom of reckoning by lunar rev-
olutions became of less use, and in time discontinued. But such is the
harmony of all parts of the machinery of the universe, that a calcula-
tion made from the motion of one part will correspond with the mo-
tion of some other.
The period of seven days, deduced from the revolution of the
moon round the earth, corresponded nearer than any other period of
days would do to the revolution of the earth round the sun. Fifty-two
periods of seven days make 364, which is within one day and some
odd hours of a solar year; and there is no other periodical number that
will do the same, till we come to the number thirteen, which is too
great for common use, and the numbers before seven are too small.
The custom therefore of reckoning by periods of seven days, as
best suited to the revolution of the moon, applied with equal conve-
nience to the solar year, and became united with it. But the decimal
division of time, as regulated by the French Calendar, is superior to
every other method.
There is no part of the Bible that is supposed to have been writ-
ten by persons who lived before the time of Josiah, (which was a
thousand years after the time of Moses), that mentions anything
about the Sabbath as a day consecrated to that which is called the
fourth commandment, or that the Jews kept any such day.
Thomas Paine 292
Had any such day been kept, during the thousand years of which
I am speaking, it certainly would have been mentioned frequently;
and that it should never be mentioned is strong presumptive and cir-
cumstantial evidence that no such day was kept. But mention is often
made of the feasts of the new moon, and of the full moon; for the
Jews, as before shown, worshipped the moon; and the word Sabbath
was applied by the Jews to the feasts of that planet, and to those of
their other deities.
It is said in Hosea ii. 11, in speaking of the Jewish nation, “And I
will cause all her mirth to cease, her feast-days, her new moons, and
her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.” Nobody will be so foolish
as to contend that the sabbaths here spoken of are Mosaic sabbaths.
The construction of the verse implies they are lunar sabbaths, or sab-
baths of the moon.
It ought also to be observed that Hosea lived in the time of Ahaz
and Hezekiah, about seventy years before the time of Josiah, when
the law called the law of Moses is said to have been found; and, con-
sequently, the sabbaths that Hosea speaks of are sabbaths of the Idol-
atry.
When those priestly reformers (impostors I should call them)
Hilkiah, Ezra, and Nehemiah, began to produce books under the
name of the books of Moses, they found the word sabbath in use: and
as to the period of seven days, it is, like numbering arithmetically by
tens, from time immemorial.
But having found them in use, they continued to make them
serve to the support of their new imposition. They trumped up a story
of the creation being made in six days, and of the Creator resting on
the seventh, to suit with the lunar and chronological period of seven
days; and they manufactured a commandment to agree with both.
Impostors always work in this manner. They put fables for orig-
inals, and causes for effects.
There is scarcely any part of science, or anything in nature,
which those impostors and blasphemers of science, called priests, as
well Christians as Jews, have not, at some time or other, perverted, or
sought to pervert to the purpose of superstition and falsehood.
Everything wonderful in appearance, has been ascribed to an-

gels, to devils, or to saints. Everything ancient has some legendary
tale annexed to it. The common operations of nature have not es-
caped their practice of corrupting everything.
FUTURE STATE
The idea of a future state was an universal idea to all nations ex-
cept the Jews. At the time, and long before, Jesus Christ and the men
called his disciples were born, it had been sublimely treated of by
Cicero (in his book on Old Age,) by Plato, Socrates, Xenophon, and
other of the ancient theologists, whom the abusive Christian Church
calls heathen. Xenophon represents the elder Cyrus speaking after
this manner:
“Think not, my dearest children, that when I depart from you, I
shall be no more: but remember that my soul, even while I lived
among you, was invisible to you; yet by my actions you were sensi-
ble it existed in this body. Believe it therefore existing still, though it
be still unseen. How quickly would the honors of illustrious men per-
ish after death, if their souls performed nothing to preserve their
fame?
“For my own part, I could never think that the soul while in a
mortal body lives, but when departed from it dies; or that its con-
sciousness is lost when it is discharged out of an unconscious habita-
tion. But when it is freed from all corporeal alliance, it is then that it
truly exists.”
Since then the idea of a future existence was universal, it may be
asked, what new doctrine does the New Testament contain? I answer,
that of corrupting the theory of the ancient theologists, by annexing
to it the heavy and gloomy doctrine of the resurrection of the body.
As to the resurrection of the body, whether the same body or an-
other, it is a miserable conceit, fit only to be preached to man as an
animal. It is not worthy to be called doctrine. Such an idea never en-
tered the brain of any visionary but those of the Christian Church; yet
it is in this that the novelty of the New Testament consists! All the
other matters serve but as props to this, and those props are most
wretchedly put together.
Thomas Paine 294
MIRACLES
The Christian Church is full of miracles. In one of the churches
of Brabant they show a number of cannon balls which, they say, the
Virgin Mary, in some former war, caught in her muslin apron as they
came roaring out of the cannon’s mouth, to prevent their hurting the
saints of her favorite army. She does no such feats now-a-days. Per-
haps the reason is, that the infidels have taken away her muslin
apron.
They show also, between Montmartre and the village of St.
Denis, several places where they say St. Denis stopped with his head
in his hands after it had been cut off at Montmartre. The Protestants
will call those things lies; and where is the proof that all the other
things called miracles are not as great lies as those?
CABALISM
Christ, say those Cabalists, came in the fullness of time. And
pray what is the fullness of time? The words admit of no idea. They
are perfectly cabalistical. Time is a word invented to describe to our
conception a greater or less portion of eternity. It may be a minute, a
portion of eternity measured by the vibration of a pendulum of a cer-
tain length; it may be a day, a year, a hundred, or a thousand years, or
any other quantity. Those portions are only greater or less compara-
tively.
The word fullness applies not to any of them. The idea of full-
ness of time cannot be conceived. A woman with child and ready for
delivery, as Mary was when Christ was born, may be said to have
gone her full time; but it is the woman that is full, not time.
It may also be said figuratively, in certain cases, that the times
are full of events; but time itself is incapable of being full of itself. Ye
hypocrites! learn to speak intelligible language.
It happened to be a time of peace when they say Christ was born;
and what then? There had been many such intervals; and have been
many such since. Time was no fuller in any of them than in the other.
If he were he would be fuller now than he ever was before. If he was
full then he must be bursting now.
But peace or war have relation to circumstances, and not to time;

and those Cabalists would be at as much loss to make out any mean-
ing to fullness of circumstances, as to fullness of time. And if they
could, it would be fatal; for fullness of circumstances would mean
when there are no more circumstances to happen; and fullness of
time when there is no more time to follow.
Christ, therefore, like every other person, was neither in the full-
ness of one nor the other.
But though we cannot conceive the idea of fullness of time, be-
cause we cannot have conception of a time when there shall be no
time; nor of fullness of circumstance, because we cannot conceive a
state of existence to be without circumstances; we can often see, af-
ter a thing is past, if any circumstance necessary to give the utmost
activity and success to that thing was wanting at the time that thing
took place.
If such a circumstance was wanting, we may be certain that the
thing which took place was not a thing of God’s ordaining; whose
work is always perfect, and His means perfect means. They tell us
that Christ was the Son of God: in that case, he would have known
everything; and he came upon earth to make known the will of God
to man throughout the whole earth.
If this had been true, Christ would have known and would have
been furnished with all the possible means of doing it; and would
have instructed mankind, or at least his apostles, in the use of such of
the means as they could use themselves to facilitate the accomplish-
ment of the mission; consequently he would have instructed them in
the art of printing, for the press is the tongue of the world, and with-
out which, his or their preaching was less than a whistle compared to
thunder.
Since then he did not do this, he had not the means necessary to
the mission; and consequently had not the mission.
They tell us in the book of Acts (ii.), a very stupid story of the
Apostles’ having the gift of tongues; and cloven tongues of fire de-
scended and sat upon each of them. Perhaps it was this story of clo-
ven tongues that gave rise to the notion of slitting jackdaws’ tongues
to make them talk. Be that however as it may, the gift of tongues,
Thomas Paine 296
even if it were true, would be but of little use without the art of print-
ing.
I can sit in my chamber, as I do while writing this, and by the aid
of printing can send the thoughts I am writing through the greatest
part of Europe, to the East Indies, and over all North America, in a
few months. Jesus Christ and his apostles could not do this. They had
not the means, and the want of means detects the pretended mission.
There are three modes of communication. Speaking, writing,
and printing. The first is exceedingly limited. A man’s voice can be
heard but a few yards of distance; and his person can be but in one
place. Writing is much more extensive; but the thing written cannot
be multiplied but at great expense, and the multiplication will be
slow and incorrect.
Were there no other means of circulating what priests call the
Word of God (the Old and New Testament) than by writing copies,
those copies could not be purchased at less than forty pounds sterling
each; consequently, but few people could purchase them, while the
writers could scarcely obtain a livelihood by it.
But the art of printing changes all the cases, and opens a scene as
vast as the world. It gives to man a sort of divine attribute. It gives to
him mental omnipresence. He can be everywhere and at the same in-
stant; for wherever he is read he is mentally there.
The case applies not only against the pretended mission of
Christ and his Apostles, but against everything that priests call the
Word of God, and against all those who pretend to deliver it; for had
God ever delivered any verbal word, He would have taught the
means of communicating it. The one without the other is inconsistent
with the wisdom we conceive of the Creator.
Genesis iii. 21 tells us that God made coats of skin and clothed
Adam and Eve. It was infinitely more important that man should be
taught the art of printing, than that Adam should be taught to make a
pair of leather breeches, or his wife a petticoat.
There is another matter, equally striking and important, that
connects itself with these observations against this pretended Word
of God, this manufactured book called Revealed Religion. We know
that whatever is of God’s doing is unalterable by man beyond the
laws which the Creator has ordained. We cannot make a tree grow
with the root in the air and the fruit in the ground; we cannot make
iron into gold nor gold into iron; we cannot make rays of light shine
forth rays of darkness, nor darkness shine forth light.
If there were such a thing, as a Word of God, it would possess
the same properties which all His other works do. It would resist de-
structive alteration. But we see that the book which they call the
Word of God has not this property. That book says, (Genesis i. 27),
“So God created man in his own image;” but the printer can make it
say, So man created God in his own image.
The words are passive to every transposition of them, or can be
annihilated and others put in their places. This is not the case with
anything that is of God’s doing; and, therefore, this book called the
Word of God, tried by the same universal rule which every other of
God’s works within our reach can be tried by, proves itself to be a
forgery.
The bishop says, that “miracles are proper proofs of a divine
mission.” Admitted. But we know that men, and especially priests,
can tell lies and call them miracles. It is therefore necessary that the
thing called a miracle be proved to be true, and also to be miraculous,
before it can be admitted as proof of the thing called revelation.
The bishop must be a bad logician not to know that one doubtful
thing cannot be admitted as proof that another doubtful thing is true.
It would be like attempting to prove a liar not to be a liar, by the evi-
dence of another who is as great a liar as himself.
Though Jesus Christ, by being ignorant of the art of printing,
shows he had not the means necessary to a divine mission, and con-
sequently had no such mission; it does not follow that if he had
known that art the divinity of what they call his mission would be
proved thereby, any more than it proved the divinity of the man who
invented printing.
Something therefore beyond printing, even if he had known it,
was necessary as a miracle, to have proved that what he delivered
was the Word of God; and this was that the book in which that word
should be contained, which is now called the Old and New Testa-
Thomas Paine 298
ment, should possess the miraculous property, distinct from all hu-
man books, of resisting alteration.
This would be not only a miracle, but an ever existing and uni-
versal miracle; whereas, those which they tell us of, even if they had
been true, were momentary and local; they would leave no trace be-
hind, after the lapse of a few years, of having ever existed; but this
would prove, in all ages and in all places, the book to be divine and
not human, as effectually, and as conveniently, as aquafortis proves
gold to be gold by not being capable of acting upon it, and detects all
other metals and all counterfeit composition, by dissolving them.
Since then the only miracle capable of every proof is wanting,
and which everything that is of a divine origin possesses, all the tales
of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit
only for impostors to preach and fools to believe.
WORSHIP AND CHURCH
BELLS
A LETTER TO CAMILLE JORDAN
CITIZEN REPRESENTATIVE:
s everything in your Report, relating to what you call wor-
A ship, connects itself with the books called the Scriptures, I
begin with a quotation therefrom. It may serve to give us some idea
of the fanciful origin and fabrication of those books, II Chronicles
xxxiv, 14, etc. “Hilkiah, the priest, found the book of the law of the
Lord given by Moses. And Hilkiah, the priest, said to Shaphan, the
scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord, and
Hilkiah delivered the book to Shaphan. And Shaphan, the scribe,
told the king, (Josiah), saying, Hilkiah, the priest, hath given me a
book.”
This pretended finding was about a thousand years after the time
that Moses is said to have lived. Before this pretended finding, there
was no such thing practiced or known in the world as that which is
called the law of Moses.
This being the case, there is every apparent evidence that the
books called the books of Moses (and which make the first part of
what are called the Scriptures) are forgeries contrived between a
priest and a limb of the law, Hilkiah, and Shaphan the scribe, a thou-
sand years after Moses is said to have been dead.
Thus much for the first part of the Bible. Every other part is
marked with circumstances equally as suspicious. We ought there-
fore to be reverentially careful how we ascribe books as his word, of
which there is no evidence, and against which there is abundant evi-
dence to the contrary, and every cause to suspect imposition.
In your Report you speak continually of something by the name
of worship, and you confine yourself to speak of one kind only, as if
there were but one, and that one was unquestionably true.
Thomas Paine 300
The modes of worship are as various as the sects are numerous;

and amidst all this variety and multiplicity there is but one article of
belief in which every religion in the world agrees. That article has
universal sanction. It is the belief of a God, or what the Greeks de-
scribed by the word Theism, and the Latins by that of Deism.
Upon this one article have been erected all the different super-
structures of creeds and ceremonies continually warring with each
other that now exist or ever existed. But the men most and best in-
formed upon the subject of theology rest themselves upon this uni-
versal article, and hold all the various superstructures erected
thereon to be at least doubtful, if not altogether artificial.
The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between every
man and his Maker, and in which no third party has any right to inter-
fere. The practical part consists in our doing good to each other. But
since religion has been made into a trade, the practical part has been
made to consist of ceremonies performed by men called priests; and
the people have been amused with ceremonial shows, processions,
and bells.
By devices of this kind true religion has been banished; and such
means have been found out to extract money even from the pockets
of the poor, instead of contributing to their relief.
No man ought to make a living by religion. It is dishonest so to
do. Religion is not an act that can be performed by proxy. One person
cannot act religion for another. Every person must perform it for
himself; and all that a priest can do is to take from him; he wants
nothing but his money and then to riot in the spoil and laugh at his
credulity.
The only people who, as a professional sect of Christians pro-
vide for the poor of their society, are people known by the name of
Quakers. Those men have no priests. They assemble quietly in their
places of meeting, and do not disturb their neighbors with shows and
noise of bells. Religion does not unite itself to show and noise. True
religion is without either. Where there is both there is no true reli-
gion.
The first object for inquiry in all cases, more especially in mat-
ters of religious concern, is TRUTH. We ought to inquire into the
truth of whatever we are taught to believe, and it is certain that the

books called the Scriptures stand, in this respect, in more than a
doubtful predicament.
They have been held in existence, and in a sort of credit among
the common class of people, by art, terror, and persecution. They
have little or no credit among the enlightened part, but they have
been made the means of encumbering the world with a numerous
priesthood, who have fattened on the labor of the people, and con-
sumed the sustenance that ought to be applied to the widows and the
poor.
It is a want of feeling to talk of priests and bells while so many
infants are perishing in the hospitals, and aged and infirm poor in the
streets, from the want of necessaries. The abundance that France pro-
duces is sufficient for every want, if rightly applied; but priests and
bells, like articles of luxury, ought to be the least articles of consider-
ation.
We talk of religion. Let us talk of truth; for that which is not
truth, is not worthy of the name of religion.
We see different parts of the world overspread with different
books, each of which, though contradictory to the other, is said by its
partisans to be of divine origin, and is made a rule of faith and prac-
tice.
In countries under despotic governments, where inquiry is al-
ways forbidden, the people are condemned to believe as they have
been taught by their priests. This was for many centuries the case in
France: but this link in the chain of slavery is happily broken by the
revolution; and, that it may never be riveted again, let us employ a
part of the liberty we enjoy in scrutinizing into the truth.
Let us leave behind us some monument, that we have made the
cause and honor of our Creator an object of our care. If we have been
imposed upon by the terrors of government and the artifice of priests
in matters of religion, let us do justice to our Creator by examining
into the case. His name is too sacred to be affixed to anything which
is fabulous; and it is our duty to inquire whether we believe, or en-
courage the people to believe, in fables or in facts.
Thomas Paine 302
It would be a project worthy the situation we are in, to invite an

inquiry of this kind. We have committees for various objects; and,
among others, a committee for bells. We have institutions, acade-
mies, and societies for various purposes; but we have none for in-
quiring into historical truth in matters of religious concern.
They show us certain books which they call the Holy Scriptures,
the word of God, and other names of that kind; but we ought to know
what evidence there is for our believing them to be so, and at what
time they originated and in what manner. We know that men could
make books, and we know that artifice and superstition could give
them a name, – could call them sacred. But we ought to be careful
that the name of our Creator be not abused. Let then all the evidence
with respect to those books be made a subject of inquiry. If there be
evidence to warrant our belief of them, let us encourage the propaga-
tion of it; but if not, let us be careful not to promote the cause of delu-
sion and falsehood.
I have already spoken of the Quakers – that they have no priests,
no bells – and that they are remarkable for their care of the poor of
their Society. They are equally as remarkable for the education of
their children. I am a descendant of a family of that profession; my
father was a Quaker; and I presume I may be admitted an evidence of
what I assert.
The seeds of good principles, and the literary means of advance-
ment in the world, are laid in early life. Instead, therefore, of con-
suming the substance of the nation upon priests, whose life at best is
a life of idleness, let us think of providing for the education of those
who have not the means of doing it themselves. One good school-
master is of more use than a hundred priests.
If we look back at what was the condition of France under the
ancien regime, we cannot acquit the priests of corrupting the morals
of the nation. Their pretended celibacy led them to carry debauchery
and domestic infidelity into every family where they could gain ad-
mission; and their blasphemous pretensions to forgive sins encour-
aged the commission of them. Why has the Revolution of France
been stained with crimes, which the Revolution of the United States
of America was not? Men are physically the same in all countries; it
is education that makes them different. Accustom a people to believe
that priests or any other class of men can forgive sins, and you will
have sins in abundance.
I come now to speak more particularly to the object of your re-

port.
You claim a privilege incompatible with the constitution and

with rights. The constitution protects equally, as it ought to do, every
profession of religion; it gives no exclusive privilege to any. The
churches are the common property of all the people; they are na-
tional goods, and cannot be given exclusively to any one profession,
because the right does not exist of giving to any one that which ap-
pertains to all.
It would be consistent with right that the churches be sold, and

the money arising therefrom be invested as a fund for the education
of children of poor parents of every profession, and, if more than suf-
ficient for this purpose, that the surplus be appropriated to the sup-
port of the aged poor. After this, every profession can erect its own
place of worship, if it choose – support its own priests, if it choose to
have any – or perform its worship without priests, as the Quakers do.
As to bells, they are a public nuisance. If one profession is to

have bells, and another has the right to use the instruments of the
same kind, or any other noisy instrument, some may choose to meet
at the sound of cannon, another at the beat of drum, another at the
sound of trumpets, and so on, until the whole becomes a scene of
general confusion. But if we permit ourselves to think of the state of
the sick, and the many sleepless nights and days they undergo, we
shall feel the impropriety of increasing their distress by the noise of
bells, or any other noisy instruments.
Quiet and private domestic devotion neither offends nor incom-

modes anybody; and the Constitution has wisely guarded against the
use of externals. Bells come under this description, and public pro-
cessions still more so. Streets and highways are for the accommoda-
tion of persons following their several occupations, and no sectary
has a right to incommode them. If anyone has, every other has the
same; and the meeting of various and contradictory processions
would be tumultuous.
Thomas Paine 304
Those who formed the Constitution had wisely reflected upon

these cases; and, whilst they were careful to reserve the equal right of
every one, they restrained everyone from giving offence, or incom-
moding another.
Men who, through a long and tumultuous scene, have lived in
retirement as you have done, may think, when they arrive at power,
that nothing is more easy than to put the world to rights in an instant;
they form to themselves gay ideas at the success of their projects; but
they forget to contemplate the difficulties that attend them, and the
dangers with which they are pregnant.
Alas! nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self. Did all men
think as you think, or as you say, your plan would need no advocate,
because it would have no opposer; but there are millions who think
differently to you, and who are determined to be neither the dupes
nor the slaves of error or design.
It is your good fortune to arrive at power, when the sunshine of
prosperity is breaking forth after a long and stormy night. The firm-
ness of your colleagues, and of those you have succeeded – the un-
abated energy of the Directory, and the unequalled bravery of the
armies of the Republic, – have made the way smooth and easy to you.
If you look back at the difficulties that existed when the Consti-
tution commenced, you cannot but be confounded with admiration at
the difference between that time and now. At that moment the Direc-
tory were placed like the forlorn hope of an army, but you were in
safe retirement. They occupied the post of honorable danger, and
they have merited well of their country.
You talk of justice and benevolence, but you begin at the wrong
end. The defenders of your country, and the deplorable state of the
poor, are objects of prior consideration to priests and bells and gaudy
processions.
You talk of peace, but your manner of talking of it embarrasses
the Directory in making it, and serves to prevent it. Had you been an
actor in all the scenes of government from its commencement, you
would have been too well informed to have brought forward projects
that operate to encourage the enemy.
When you arrived at a share in the government, you found ev-

erything tending to a prosperous issue. A series of victories un-
equalled in the world, and in the obtaining of which you had no
share, preceded your arrival. Every enemy but one was subdued; and
that one, (the Hanoverian government of England,) deprived of ev-
ery hope, and a bankrupt in all its resources, was suing for peace. In
such a state of things, no new question that might tend to agitate and
anarchize the interior ought to have had place; and the project you
propose tends directly to that end.
While France was a monarchy, and under the government of

those things called kings and priests, England could always defeat
her; but since France has RISEN TO BE A REPUBLIC, the
GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND crouches beneath her, so great is
the difference between a government of kings and priests, and that
which is founded on the system of representation.
But, could the Government of England find a way, under the

sanction of your report, to inundate France with a flood of emigrant
priests, she would find also the way to domineer as before; she would
retrieve her shattered finances at your expense, and the ringing of
bells would be the tocsin of your downfall.
Did peace consist in nothing but the cessation of war, it would

not be difficult; but the terms are yet to be arranged and those terms
will be better or worse, in proportion as France and her counsels be
united or divided. That the government of England counts much
upon your Report, and upon others of a similar tendency, is what the
writer of this letter, who knows that government well, has no doubt.
You are but new on the theatre of government, and you ought to
suspect yourself of misjudging; the experience of those who have
gone before you, should be of some service to you. But if, in conse-
quence of such measures as you propose, you put it out of the power
of the Directory to make a good peace, and force them to accept of
terms you would afterwards reprobate, it is yourself that must bear
the censure.
You conclude your report by the following address to your col-

leagues:
Thomas Paine 306
“Let us hasten, representatives of the people! to affix to these tu-

telary laws the seal of our unanimous approbation. All our fel-
low-citizens will learn to cherish political liberty from the
enjoyment of religious liberty: you will have broken the most power-
ful arm of your enemies; you will have surrounded this assembly
with the most impregnable rampart – confidence, and the people’s
love.
“O my colleagues, how desirable is that popularity which is the
offspring of good laws! What a consolation it will be to us hereafter,
when returned to our own firesides, to hear from the mouths of our
fellow-citizens these simple expressions – Blessings reward you,
men of peace! you have restored to us our temples, our ministers, the
liberty of adoring the God of our fathers: you have recalled harmony
to our families – morality to our hearts: You have made us adore the
legislature and respect all its laws!”
Is it possible, citizen representative, that you can be serious in
this address? Were the lives of the priests under the ancien regime
such as to justify anything you say of them? Were not all France con-
vinced of their immorality? Were they not considered as the patrons
of debauchery and domestic infidelity, and not as the patrons of mor-
als? What was their pretended celibacy but perpetual adultery? What
was their blasphemous pretention to forgive sins but an encourage-
ment to the commission of them, and a love for their own?
Do you want to lead again into France all the vices of which
they have been the patrons, and to overspread the republic with Eng-
lish pensioners? It is cheaper to corrupt than to conquer; and the Eng-
lish Government, unable to conquer, will stoop to corrupt.
Arrogance and meanness, though in appearance opposite, are vices
of the same heart.
Instead of concluding in the manner you have done, you ought
rather to have said:
“O my colleagues! we are arrived at a glorious period – a period
that promises more than we could have expected, and all that we
could have wished. Let us hasten to take into consideration the hon-
ors and rewards due to our brave defenders. Let us hasten to give en-
couragement to agriculture and manufactures, that commerce may
reinstate itself, and our people have employment. Let us review the
condition of the suffering poor, and wipe from our country the re-
proach of forgetting them.
“Let us devise means to establish schools of instruction, that we
may banish the ignorance that the ancien regime of kings and priests
had spread among the people. Let us propagate morality, unfettered
by superstition. Let us cultivate justice and benevolence, that the
God of our fathers may bless us. The helpless infant and the aged
poor cry to us to remember them. Let not wretchedness be seen in our
streets. Let France exhibit to the world the glorious example of ex-
pelling ignorance and misery together.
“Let these, my virtuous colleagues, be the subject of our care
that, when we return among our fellow-citizens they may say, Wor-
thy representatives! you have done well. You have done justice and
honor to our brave defenders. You have encouraged agriculture,
cherished our decayed manufactures, given new life to commerce,
and employment to our people.
“You have removed from our the reproach of forgetting the poor
– You have caused the cry of the orphan to cease – You have wiped
the tear from the eye of the suffering mother – You have given com-
fort to the aged and infirm – You have penetrated into the gloomy re-
cesses of wretchedness, and have banished it.
“Welcome among us, ye brave and virtuous representatives, and
may your example be followed by your successors!”
— THOMAS PAINE
REMARKS ON R. HALL’S
SERMON
he preacher of the foregoing sermon speaks a great deal
T about infidelity, but does not define what he means by it. His
harangue is a general exclamation. Everything, I suppose that is not
in his creed is infidelity with him, and his creed is infidelity with me.
Infidelity is believing falsely. If what Christians believe is not true, it
is the Christians that are the infidels.
The point between Deists and Christians is not about doctrine,
but about fact – for if the things believed by the Christians to be facts
are not facts, the doctrine founded thereon falls of itself. There is
such a book as the Bible, but is it a fact that the Bible is revealed reli-
gion? The Christians cannot prove it is. They put tradition in place of
evidence, and tradition is not proof. If it were, the reality of witches
could be proved by the same kind of evidence.
The Bible is a history of the times of which it speaks, and history
is not revelation. The obscene and vulgar stories in the Bible are as
repugnant to our ideas of the purity of a divine Being, as the horrid
cruelties and murders it ascribes to Him are repugnant to our ideas of
His justice. It is the reverence of the Deists for the attributes of the
DEITY, that causes them to reject the Bible.
Is the account which the Christian church gives of the person
called Jesus Christ a fact, or a fable? Is it a fact that he was begotten
by the Holy Ghost? The Christians cannot prove it, for the case does
not admit of proof.
The things called miracles in the Bible, such for instance as rais-
ing the dead, admitted if true of occular demonstration, but the story
of the conception of Jesus Christ in the womb is a case beyond mira-
cle, for it did not admit of demonstration.
Mary, the reputed mother of Jesus, who must be supposed to
know best, never said so herself, and all the evidence of it is that the
book of Matthew says that Joseph dreamed an angel told him so. Had
an old maid two or three hundred years of age brought forth a child it
would have been much better presumptive evidence of a supernatu-
ral conception, than Matthew’s story of Joseph’s dream about his
young wife.
Is it a fact that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world, and
how is it proved? If a God he could not die, and as a man he could not
redeem. How then is this redemption proved to be fact? It is said that
Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, commonly called an apple, and
thereby subjected himself and all his posterity for ever to eternal
damnation.
This is worse than visiting the sins of the fathers upon the chil-
dren unto the third and fourth generations. But how was the death of
Jesus Christ to affect or alter the case? Did God thirst for blood? If
so, would it not have been better to have crucified Adam at once
upon the forbidden tree, and made a new man? Would not this have
been more creator-like than repairing the old one?
Or did God, when He made Adam, supposing the story to be
true, exclude Himself from the right of making another? or impose
on Himself the necessity of breeding from the old stock? Priests
should first prove facts, and deduce doctrines from them afterwards.
But instead of this they assume everything and prove nothing. Au-
thorities drawn from the Bible are no more than authorities drawn
from other books, unless it can be proved that the Bible is revelation.
The story of the redemption will not stand examination. That
man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by com-
mitting a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion
ever set up. Deism is perfect purity compared with this.
It is an established principle with the Quakers not to shed blood:
suppose then all Jerusalem had been Quakers when Christ lived,
there would have been nobody to crucify him, and in that case, if
man is redeemed by his blood, which is the belief of the Church,
there could have been no redemption; and the people of Jerusalem
must all have been damned because they were too good to commit
murder. The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common
sense. Why is man afraid to think?
Thomas Paine 310
Why do not the Christians, to be consistent, make saints of Judas

and Pontius Pilate? For they were the persons who accomplished the
act of salvation. The merit of a sacrifice, if there can be any merit in
it, was never in the thing sacrificed, but in the persons offering up the
sacrifice – and, therefore, Judas and Pontius Pilate ought to stand
first on the calendar of saints.
OF CAIN AND ABEL
he story of Cain and Abel is told in Genesis iv. Cain was the
T elder brother, and Abel the younger, and Cain killed Abel.
The Egyptian story of Typhon and Osiris, and the Jewish story in
Genesis of Cain and Abel, have the appearance of being the same
story differently told, and that it came originally from Egypt.
In the Egyptian story, Typhon and Osiris are brothers; Typhon is
the elder, and Osiris the younger, and Typhon kills Osiris. The story
is an allegory on Darkness and Light: Typhon, the elder brother, is
Darkness, because Darkness was supposed to be more ancient than
Light: Osiris is the Good Light who rules during the summer months,
and brings forth the fruits of the earth, and is the favorite, as Abel is
said to have been; for which Typhon hates him; and when the winter
comes, and cold and darkness overspread the earth, Typhon is repre-
sented as having killed Osiris out of malice, as Cain is said to have
killed Abel.
The two stories are alike in their circumstances and their event,
and are probably but the same story. What corroborates this opinion
is, that the fifth chapter of Genesis historically contradicts the reality
of the story of Cain and Abel in the fourth chapter; for though the
name of Seth, a son of Adam, is mentioned in the fourth chapter, he is
spoken of in the fifth chapter as if he was the firstborn of Adam. The
chapter begins thus:
This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God
created man, in the likeness of God created He him; Male and female
created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in
the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and
thirty years and begat a son, in his own likeness and after his image,
and called his name Seth.” The rest of the chapter goes on with the
genealogy.
Anybody reading this chapter, cannot suppose there were any
sons born before Seth. The chapter begins with what is called the cre-
Thomas Paine 312
ation of Adam, and calls itself the book of the generation of Adam,
yet no mention is made of such persons as Cain and Abel.
One thing however is evident on the face of these two chapters,
which is, that the same person is not the writer of both; the most
blundering historian could not have committed himself in such a
manner.
Though I look on everything in the first ten chapters of Genesis
to be fiction, yet fiction historically told should be consistent;
whereas these two chapters are not. The Cain and Abel of Genesis
appear to be no other than the ancient Egyptian story of Typhon and
Osiris, the Darkness and the Light, which answered very well as an
allegory without being believed as a fact.
OF THE BOOKS OF THE
NEW TESTAMENT
ADDRESS TO THE BELIEVERS IN THE BOOK
CALLED THE SCRIPTURES
he New Testament contains twenty-seven books, of which

T four are called Gospels; one called the Acts of the Apostles;
fourteen called the Epistles of Paul; one of James; two of Peter; three
of John; one of Jude; one called the Revelation.
None of those books have the appearance of being written by the
persons whose names they bear, neither do we know who the authors
were. They come to us on no other authority than the Church of
Rome, which the Protestant Priests, especially those of New Eng-
land, call the Whore of Babylon.
This church, or to use their own vulgar language, this whore, ap-
pointed sundry councils to be held, to compose creeds for the people,
and to regulate Church affairs. Two of the principal of these councils
were that of Nice, and of Laodicea (names of the places where the
councils were held) about three hundred and fifty years after the time
that Jesus is said to have lived. Before this time there was no such
book as the New Testament.
But the Church could not well go on without having something
to show, as the Persians showed the Zend-Avesta, revealed they say
by God to Zoroaster; the Bramins of India, the Shaster, revealed,
they say, by God to Brama, and given to him out of a dusky cloud; the
Jews, the books they call the Law of Moses, given they say also out
of a cloud on Mount Sinai.
The Church set about forming a code for itself out of such mate-
rials as it could find or pick up. But where they got those materials, in
what language they were written, or whose handwriting they were,
Thomas Paine 314
or whether they were originals or copies, or on what authority they

stood, we know nothing of, nor does the New Testament tell us.
The Church was resolved to have a New Testament, and as, after
the lapse of more than three hundred years, no handwriting could be
proved or disproved, the Church, which like former impostors had
then gotten possession of the State, had everything its own way. It in-
vented creeds, such as that called the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicean
Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and out of the loads of rubbish that
were presented it voted four to be Gospels, and others to be Epistles,
as we now find them arranged.
Of those called Gospels, above forty were presented, each con-
tending to be genuine. Four only were voted in, and entitled: the
Gospel according to St. Matthew – the Gospel according to St. Mark
– the Gospel according to St. Luke – the Gospel according to St.
John.
This word according, shows that those books have not been
written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but according to some
accounts or traditions, picked up concerning them. The word “ac-
cording” means agreeing with, and necessarily includes the idea of
two things, or two persons.
We cannot say, The Gospel written by Matthew according to
Matthew, but we might say, the Gospel of some other person accord-
ing to what was reported to have been the opinion of Matthew. Now
we do not know who those other persons were, nor whether what
they wrote accorded with anything that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John might have said. There is too little evidence, and too much con-
trivance, about those books to merit credit.
The next book after those called Gospels, is that called the Acts
of the Apostles. This book is anonymous; neither do the councils that
compiled or contrived the New Testament tell us how they came by
it. The Church, to supply this defect, say it was written by Luke,
which shows that the Church and its priests have not compared that
called the Gospel according to St. Luke and the Acts together, for the
two contradict each other.
The book of Luke, xxiv., makes Jesus ascend into heaven the
very same day that it makes him rise from the grave. The book of
Acts, i. 3, says that he remained on earth forty days after his crucifix-
ion. There is no believing what either of them says.
The next to the book of Acts is that entitled, “The Epistle of Paul
the Apostle* to the Romans.” This is not an Epistle, or letter, written
by Paul or signed by him. It is an Epistle, or letter, written by a person
who signs himself TERTIUS, and sent, as it is said in the end, by a
servant woman called Phebe. The last chapter, ver. 22, says, “I
Tertius, who wrote this Epistle, salute you.” Who Tertius or Phebe
were, we know nothing of.
The epistle is not dated. The whole of it is written in the first per-
son, and that person is Tertius, not Paul. But it suited the Church to
ascribe it to Paul. There is nothing in it that is interesting except it be
to contending and wrangling sectaries. The stupid metaphor of the
potter and the clay is in chapter ix.
The next book is entitled “The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle
to the Corinthians.” This, like the former, is not an Epistle written by
Paul, nor signed by him. The conclusion of the Epistle says, “The
first epistle to the Corinthians was written from Philippi, by
Stephanas, and Fortunatus, and Achaicus, and Timotheus.”
The second epistle entitled, “The second Epistle of Paul the
Apostle to the Corinthians,” is in the same case with the first. The
conclusion of it says, “It was written from Philippi, a city of Macedo-
nia, by Titus and Lucas.”
A question may arise upon these cases, which is, are these per-
sons the writers of the epistles originally, or are they the writers and
attestors of copies sent to the councils who compiled the code or
canon of the New Testament? If the epistles had been dated this ques-
tion could be decided; but in either of the cases the evidences of
Paul’s hand writing and of their being written by him is wanting, and,
therefore, there is no authority for calling them Epistles of Paul. We
* According to the criterion of the Church, Paul was not an apostle; that
appellation being given only to those called the Twelve. Two sailors be-
longing to a man-of-war got into a dispute upon this point, whether Paul
was an apostle or not, and they agreed to refer it to the boatswain, who
decided very canonically that Paul was an acting apostle but not rated.
Thomas Paine 316
know not whose Epistles they were, nor whether they are genuine or
forged.
The next is entitled, “The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the
Galatians.” It contains six short chapters, yet the writer of it says, vi.
11, “Ye see how large a letter I have written to you with my own
hand.” If Paul was the writer of this it shows he did not accustom
himself to write long epistles; yet the epistle to the Romans and the
first to the Corinthians contain sixteen chapters each; the second to
the Corinthians and that to the Hebrews thirteen each.
There is something contradictory in these matters. But short as
the epistle is, it does not carry the appearance of being the work or
composition of one person. Chapter v, 2, says, “If ye be circumcised
Christ shall avail you nothing.” It does not say circumcision shall
profit you nothing, but Christ shall profit you nothing. Yet in vi, 15, it
says “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor
uncircumcision, but a new creature.”
These are not reconcilable passages, nor can contrivance make
them so. The conclusion of the epistle says it was written from
Rome, but it is not dated, nor is there any signature to it, neither do
the compilers of the New Testament say how they came by it. We are
in the dark upon all these matters.
Ephesians.” Paul is not the writer. The conclusion of it says, “Written
from Rome unto the Ephesians by Tychicus.”
Philippians.” Paul is not the writer. The conclusion of it says, “It was
written to the Philippians from Rome by Epaphroditus.” It is not
dated. Query, were those men who wrote and signed those Epistles
journeymen Apostles, who undertook to write in Paul’s name, as
Paul is said to have preached in Christ’s name?
Colossians.” Paul is not the writer. Doctor Luke is spoken of in this
Epistle as sending his compliments. “Luke, the beloved physician,
and Demas, greet you.” (iv, 14). It does not say a word about his writ-
ing any Gospel. The conclusion of the epistle says, “Written from
Rome to the Colossians by Tychicus and Onesimus.”
The next is entitled, “The first and the second Epistles of Paul
the Apostle to the Thessalonians.” Either the writer of these Epistles
was a visionary enthusiast, or a direct impostor, for he tells the
Thessalonians, and, he says, he tells them by the Word of the Lord,
that the world will be at an end in his and their time; and after telling
them that those who are already dead shall rise, he adds, iv, 17,
“Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up with them
into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we be ever
with the Lord.”
Such detected lies as these, ought to fill priests with confusion,
when they preach such books to be the Word of God. These two
Epistles are said in the conclusion of them, to be written from Ath-
ens. They are without date or signature.
The next four Epistles are private letters. Two of them are to
Timothy, one to Titus, and one to Philemon. Who they were, nobody
knows.
The first to Timothy, is said to be written from Laodicea. It is
without date or signature. The second to Timothy, is said to be writ-
ten from Rome, and is without date or signature. The Epistle to Titus
is said to be written from Nicopolis in Macedonia. It is without date
or signature. The Epistle to Philemon is said to be written from Rome
by Onesimus. It is without date.
The last Epistle ascribed to Paul is entitled, “The Epistle of Paul
the Apostle to the Hebrews,” and is said in the conclusion to be writ-
ten from Italy, by Timothy. This Timothy (according to the conclu-
sion of the epistle called the second Epistle of Paul to Timothy) was
Bishop of the Church of the Ephesians, and consequently this is not
an Epistle of Paul.
On what slender cobweb evidence do the priests and professors
of the Christian religion hang their faith! The same degree of hearsay
evidence, and that at third and fourth hand, would not, in a court of
justice, give a man title to a cottage, and yet the priests of this profes-
sion presumptuously promise their deluded followers the Kingdom
of Heaven. A little reflection would teach men that those books are
not to be trusted to; that so far from there being any proof they are the
Word of God, it is unknown who the writers of them were, or at what
Thomas Paine 318
time they were written, within three hundred years after the reputed
authors are said to have lived.
It is not the interest of priests, who get their living by them, to
examine into the insufficiency of the evidence upon which those
books were received by the popish councils who compiled the New
Testament. But if Messrs. Linn and Mason would occupy themselves
upon this subject (it signifies not which side they take, for the event
will be the same) they would be better employed than they were last
Presidential election, in writing jesuitical electioneering pamphlets.
The very name of a priest attaches suspicion on to it the instant he be-
comes a dabbler in party politics.
The New England priests set themselves up to govern the state,
and they are falling into contempt for so doing. Men who have their
farms and their several occupations to follow, and have a common
interest with their neighbors in the public prosperity and tranquility
of their country, neither want nor choose to be told by a priest who
they shall vote for, nor how they shall conduct their temporal con-
cerns.
The cry of the priests that the Church is in danger, is the cry of
men who do not understand the interest of their own craft; for instead
of exciting alarms and apprehensions for its safety, as they expect, it
excites suspicion that the foundation is not sound, and that it is nec-
essary to take down and build it on a surer foundation. Nobody fears
for the safety of a mountain, but a hillock of sand may be washed
away! Blow then, O ye priests, “the Trumpet in Zion,” for the
Hillock is in danger.
HINTS TOWARD FORMING A SOCIETY FOR
INQUIRING INTO
THE TRUTH OR
FALSEHOOD OF ANCIENT
HISTORY,
SO FAR AS HISTORY IS CONNECTED WITH
SYSTEMS OF RELIGION ANCIENT AND
MODERN
t has been customary to class history into three divisions, dis-

I tinguished by the names of Sacred, Profane, and Ecclesiasti-
cal. By the first is meant the Bible; by the second, the history of
nations, of men and things; and by the third, the history of the church
and its priesthood.
Nothing is more easy than to give names, and, therefore, mere
names signify nothing unless they lead to the discovery of some
cause for which that name was given. For example, Sunday is the
name given to the first day of the week, in the English language, and
it is the same in the Latin, that is, it has the same meaning, (Dies
solis,) and also in the German, and in several other languages.
Why then was this name given to that day? Because it was the
day dedicated by the ancient world to the luminary which in the Eng-
lish we call the Sun, and therefore the day Sun-day, or the day of the
Sun; as in the like manner we call the second day Monday, the day
dedicated to the Moon.
Here the name Sunday leads to the cause of its being called so,
and we have visible evidence of the fact, because we behold the Sun
from whence the name comes; but this is not the case when we dis-
tinguish one part of history from another by the name of Sacred.
All histories have been written by men. We have no evidence,
nor any cause to believe, that any have been written by God. That
Thomas Paine 320
part of the Bible called the Old Testament, is the history of the Jewish
nation, from the time of Abraham, which begins in Genesis xi., to the
downfall of that nation by Nebuchadnezzar, and is no more entitled
to be called sacred than any other history. It is altogether the contriv-
ance of priestcraft that has given it that name. So far from its being
sacred, it has not the appearance of being true in many of the things it
relates.
It must be better authority than a book which any impostor
might make, as Mahomet made the Koran, to make a thoughtful man
believe that the sun and moon stood still, or that Moses and Aaron
turned the Nile, which is larger than the Delaware, into blood; and
that the Egyptian magicians did the same. These things have too
much the appearance of romance to be believed for fact.
It would be of use to inquire, and ascertain the time, when that
part of the Bible called the Old Testament first appeared. From all
that can be collected there was no such book till after the Jews re-
turned from captivity in Babylon, and that is the work of the Phari-
sees of the Second Temple. How they came to make Kings xix. and
Isaiah xxxvii word for word alike, can only be accounted for by their
having no plan to go by, and not knowing what they were about.
The same is the case with respect to the last verses in II Chroni-
cles, and the first verses in Ezra; they also are word for word alike,
which shows that the Bible has been put together at random.
But besides these things there is great reason to believe we have
been imposed upon with respect to the antiquity of the Bible, and es-
pecially with respect to the books ascribed to Moses. Herodotus,
who is called the father of history, and is the most ancient historian
whose works have reached to our time, and who travelled into Egypt,
conversed with the priests, historians, astronomers, and learned men
of that country, for the purpose of obtaining all the information of it
he could, and who gives an account of the ancient state of it, makes
no mention of such a man as Moses, though the Bible makes him to
have been the greatest hero there, nor of any one circumstance men-
tioned in the Book of Exodus respecting Egypt, such as turning the
rivers into blood, the dust into lice, the death of the first born
throughout all the land of Egypt, the passage of the Red Sea, the
drowning of Pharaoh and all his host, things which could not have
been a secret in Egypt, and must have been generally known, had
they been facts; and, therefore, as no such things were known in
Egypt, nor any such man as Moses, at the time Herodotus was there,
which is about 2,200 years ago, it shows that the account of these
things in the books ascribed to Moses is a made story of later times,
that is, after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, and
that Moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him.
With respect to the cosmogony, or account of the Creation, in
Genesis i., of the Garden of Eden in chapter ii., and of what is called
the Fall of Man in chapter iii., there is something concerning them
we are not historically acquainted with. In none of the books of the
Bible, after Genesis, are any of these things mentioned, or even al-
luded to.
How is this to be accounted for? The obvious inference is, that
either they were not known, or not believed to be facts, by the writers
of the other books of the Bible, and that Moses is not the author of the
chapters where these accounts are given.
The next question on the case is, how did the Jews come by
these notions, and at what time were they written? To answer this
question we must first consider what the state of the world was at the
time the Jews began to be a people, for the Jews are but a modern
race compared with the antiquity of other nations.
At the time there were, even by their own account, but thirteen
Jews or Israelites in the world, Jacob and his twelve sons, and four of
these were bastards, the nations of Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, and India,
were great and populous, abounding in learning and science, particu-
larly in the knowledge of astronomy, of which the Jews were always
ignorant.
The chronological tables mention that eclipses were observed at
Babylon above two thousand years before the Christian era, which
was before there was a single Jew or Israelite in the world.
All those ancient nations had their cosmogonies, that is, their ac-
counts how the creation was made, long before there was such peo-
ple as Jews or Israelites. An account of these cosmogonies of India
and Persia is given by Henry Lord, Chaplain to the East India Com-
pany at Surat, and published in London in 1630. The writer of this
Thomas Paine 322
has seen a copy of the edition of 1630, and made extracts from it. The
work, which is now scarce, was dedicated by Lord to the Archbishop
of Canterbury.
We know that the Jews were carried captive into Babylon by
Nebuchadnezzar, and remained in captivity several years, when they
were liberated by Cyrus, King of Persia. During their captivity they
would have had an opportunity of acquiring some knowledge of the
cosmogony of the Persians, or at least of getting some ideas how to
fabricate one to put at the head of their own history after their return
from captivity. This will account for the cause, for some cause there
must have been, that no mention nor reference is made to the cos-
mogony in Genesis in any of the books of the Bible supposed to have
been written before the captivity, nor is the name of Adam to be
found in any of those books.
The books of Chronicles were written after the return of the
Jews from captivity, for the third chapter of the first book gives a list
of all the Jewish kings from David to Zedekiah, who was carried cap-
tive into Babylon, and to four generations beyond the time of
Zedekiah. In Chron. i. I, the name of Adam is mentioned, but not in
any book in the Bible written before that time, nor could it be, for
Adam and Eve are names taken from the cosmogony of the Persians.
Henry Lord, in his book, written from Surat and dedicated, as I
have already said, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, says that in the
Persian cosmogony the name of the first man was Adamoh, and of
the woman Hevah.* From hence comes the Adam and Eve of the
book of Genesis. In the cosmogony of India, of which I shall speak in
a future number, the name of the first man was Pourous, and of the
woman Parcoutee. We want a knowledge of the Sanscrit language of
India to understand the meaning of the names, and I mention it in this
place, only to show that it is from the cosmogony of Persia, rather
than that of India, that the cosmogony in Genesis has been fabricated
by the Jews, who returned from captivity by the liberality of Cyrus,
king of Persia.
* In an English edition of the Bible, in 1583, the first woman is called

Hevah.
There is, however, reason to conclude, on the authority of Sir

William Jones, who resided several years in India, that these names
were very expressive in the language to which they belonged, for in
speaking of this language, he says, (see the Asiatic Researches),
“The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of wonderful
structure; it is more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the
Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either.”
These hints, which are intended to be continued, will serve to
show that a society for inquiring into the ancient state of the world,
and the state of ancient history, so far as history is connected with
systems of religion, ancient and modern, may become a useful and
instructive institution.
There is good reason to believe we have been in great error with
respect to the antiquity of the Bible, as well as imposed upon by its
contents. Truth ought to be the object of every man; for without truth
there can be no real happiness to a thoughtful mind, or any assurance
of happiness hereafter. It is the duty of man to obtain all the knowl-
edge he can, and then make the best use of it.
TO MR. MOORE, OF NEW
YORK, COMMONLY
CALLED BISHOP MOORE
have read in the newspapers your account of the visit you
I made to the unfortunate General Hamilton,* and of adminis-
tering to him a ceremony of your church which you call the Holy
Communion.
I regret the fate of General Hamilton, and I so far hope with you
that it will be a warning to thoughtless man not to sport away the life
that God has given him; but with respect to other parts of your letter I
think it very reprehensible, and betrays great ignorance of what true
religion is. But you are a priest, you get your living by it, and it is not
your worldly interest to undeceive yourself.
After giving an account of your administering to the deceased
what you call the Holy Communion, you add, “By reflecting on this
melancholy event let the humble believer be encouraged ever to hold
fast that precious faith which is the only source of true consolation in
the last extremity of nature. Let the infidel be persuaded to abandon
his opposition to the Gospel.”
To show you, Sir, that your promise of consolation from Scrip-
ture has no foundation to stand upon, I will cite to you one of the
greatest falsehoods upon record, and which was given, as the record
says, for the purpose, and as a promise, of consolation.
In the epistle called the First Epistle of Paul to the Thessalon-
ians, iv, the writer consoles the Thessalonians as to the case of their
friends who were already dead.
* Alexander Hamilton who was dying from a gunshot he received in a

duel. — Editor
He does this by informing them, and he does it he says, by the

word of the Lord, (a most notorious falsehood,) that the general res-
urrection of the dead and the ascension of the living will be in his and
their days; that their friends will then come to life again; that the dead
in Christ will rise first. – “Then WE (says he, ver. 17, 18) which are
alive and remain shall be caught up together with THEM in the
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the
Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”
Delusion and falsehood cannot be carried higher than they are in
this passage. You, Sir, are but a novice in the art. The words admit of
no equivocation. The whole passage is in the first person and the
present tense, “We which are alive.”
Had the writer meant a future time, and a distant generation, it
must have been in the third person and the future tense. “They who
shall then be alive.” I am thus particular for the purpose of nailing
you down to the text, that you may not ramble from it, nor put other
constructions upon the words than they will bear, which priests are
very apt to do.
Now, Sir, it is impossible for serious man, to whom God has
given the divine gift of reason, and who employs that reason to rever-
ence and adore the God that gave it, it is, I say, impossible for such a
man to put confidence in a book that abounds with fable and false-
hood as the New Testament does. This passage is but a sample of
what I could give you.
You call on those whom you style “infidels,” (and they in return
might call you an idolater, a worshipper of false gods, a preacher of
false doctrines), “to abandon their opposition to the Gospel.” Prove,
Sir, the Gospel to be true, and the opposition will cease of itself; but
until you do this (which we know you cannot do) you have no right to
expect they will notice your call. If by infidels you mean Deists (and
you must be exceedingly ignorant of the origin of the word Deist,
and know but little of Deus, to put that construction upon it), you will
find yourself over-matched if you begin to engage in a controversy
with them.
Priests may dispute with priests, and sectaries with sectaries,
about the meaning of what they agree to call Scripture, and end as
they began; but when you engage with a Deist you must keep to fact.
Thomas Paine 326
Now, Sir, you cannot prove a single article of your religion to be true,
and we tell you so publicly. Do it, if you can. The Deistical article,
the belief of a God, with which your creed begins, has been borrowed
by your church from the ancient Deists, and even this article you dis-
honor by putting a dream-begotten phantom* which you call His son,
over His head, and treating God as if he was superannuated.
Deism is the only profession of religion that admits of worship-
ping and reverencing God in purity, and the only one on which the
thoughtful mind can repose with undisturbed tranquillity. God is al-
most forgotten in the Christian religion. Everything, even the cre-
ation, is ascribed to the son of Mary.
In religion, as in everything else, perfection consists in simplic-
ity. The Christian religion of Gods within Gods, like wheels within
wheels, is like a complicated machine that never goes right, and ev-
ery projector in the art of Christianity is trying to mend it. It is its de-
fects that have caused such a number and variety of tinkers to be
hammering at it, and still it goes wrong.
In the visible world no time-keeper can go equally true with the
sun; and in like manner, no complicated religion can be equally true
with the pure and unmixed religion of Deism.
Had you not offensively glanced at a description of men whom
you call by a false name, you would not have been troubled nor hon-
ored with this address; neither has the writer of it any desire or inten-
tion to enter into controversy with you. He thinks the temporal
establishment of your church politically unjust and offensively un-
fair; but with respect to religion itself, distinct from temporal estab-
lishments, he is happy in the enjoyment of his own, and he leaves
you to make the best you can of yours.
* The first chapter of Matthew, relates that Joseph, the betrothed hus-
band of Mary, dreamed that the angel told him that his intended bride
was with child by the Holy Ghost. It is not every husband, whether car-
penter or priest, that can be so easily satisfied, for lo! It was a dream.
Whether Mary was in a dream when this was done we are not told. It is,
however, a comical story. There is no woman living can understand it.
TO JOHN MASON, ONE OF
THE MINISTERS OF THE
SCOTCH PRESBYTERIAN
CHURCH OF NEW YORK,
WITH REMARKS ON HIS ACCOUNT OF THE
VISIT HE MADE TO THE LATE GENERAL
HAMILTON
ome now, let us REASON together saith the Lord.” This

“C is one of the passages you quoted from your Bible, in
your conversation with General Hamilton,* as given in your letter,
signed with your name, and published in the Commercial Advertiser,
and other New York papers, and I requote the passage to show that
your text and your religion contradict each other.
It is impossible to reason upon things not comprehensible by

reason; and therefore, if you keep to your text, which priests seldom
do, (for they are generally either above it, or below it, or forget it,)
you must admit a religion to which reason can apply, and this cer-
tainly is not the Christian religion.
There is not an article in the Christian religion that is cognizable

by reason. The Deistical article of your religion, the belief of a God,
is no more a Christian article than it is a Mahometan article. It is an
universal article, common to all religions, and which is held in
greater purity by Turks than by Christians; but the Deistical church is
the only one which holds it in real purity; because that church ac-
knowledges no co-partnership with God. It believes in Him solely;
* Alexander Hamilton who was dying from a gunshot he received in a

duel. — Editor.
Thomas Paine 328
and knows nothing of sons, married virgins, nor ghosts. It holds all
these things to be the fables of priestcraft.
Why then do you talk of reason, or refer to it, since your religion
has nothing to do with reason, nor reason with that? You tell people
as you told Hamilton, that they must have faith! Faith in what? You
ought to know that before the mind can have faith in anything, it
must either know it as a fact, or see cause to believe it on the proba-
bility of that kind of evidence that is cognizable by reason.
But your religion is not within either of these cases; for, in the
first place, you cannot prove it to be fact; and in the second place,
you cannot support it by reason, not only because it is not cognizable
by reason, but because it is contrary to reason.
What reason can there be in supposing, or believing that God put
Himself to death to satisfy Himself, and be revenged on the Devil on
account of Adam? For, tell the story which way you will it comes to
this at last.
As you can make no appeal to reason in support of an unreason-
able religion, you then (and others of your profession) bring your-
selves off by telling people they must not believe in reason but in
revelation.
This is the artifice of habit without reflection. It is putting words
in the place of things; for do you not see that when you tell people to
believe in revelation, you must first prove that what you call revela-
tion, is revelation; and as you cannot do this, you put the word, which
is easily spoken, in the place of the thing you cannot prove.
You have no more evidence that your Gospel is revelation than
the Turks have that their Koran is revelation, and the only difference
between them and you is, that they preach their delusion and you
preach yours.
In your conversation with General Hamilton, you say to him,
“The simple truths of the Gospel which require no abstruse investi-
gation, but faith in the veracity of God who cannot lie, are best suited
to your present condition.”
If those matters you call “simple truths” are what you call them,
and require no abstruse investigation, they would be so obvious that
reason would easily comprehend them; yet the doctrine you preach
at other times is, that the mysteries of the Gospel are beyond the
reach of reason.
If your first position be true, that they are simple truths, priests
are unnecessary, for we do not want preachers to tell us the sun
shines; and if your second be true, the case, as to effect, is the same,
for it is waste of money to pay a man to explain unexplainable things,
and loss of time to listen to him.
That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because
it is no proof that priests cannot, or, that the Bible does not. Did not
Paul lie when he told the Thessalonians that the general resurrection
of the dead would be in his lifetime, and that he should go up alive
along with them into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air? I Thes. iv.
17.
You spoke of what you call, “the precious blood of Christ.” This
savage style of language belongs to the priests of the Christian reli-
gion. The professors of this religion say they are shocked at the ac-
counts of human sacrifices of which they read in the histories of
some countries. Do they not see that their own religion is founded on
a human sacrifice, the blood of man, of which their priests talk like
so many butchers?
It is no wonder the Christian religion has been so bloody in its
effects, for it began in blood, and many thousands of human sacri-
fices have since been offered on the altar of the Christian religion.
It is necessary to the character of a religion, as being true, and
immutable as God Himself is, that the evidence of it be equally the
same through all periods of time and circumstance.
This is not the case with the Christian religion, nor with that of
the Jews that preceded it, (for there was a time and that within the
knowledge of history, when these religions did not exist,) nor is it the
case with any religion we know of but the religion of Deism. In this
the evidences are eternal and universal. “The heavens declare the
glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto
day uttereth speech, and night unto nigh showeth knowledge.1” But
all other religions are made to arise from some local circumstance,
and are introduced by some temporary trifle which its partisans call a
miracle, but of which there is no proof but the story of it.
Thomas Paine 330
The Jewish religion, according to the history of it, began in a

wilderness, and the Christian religion in a stable. The Jewish books
tell us of wonders exhibited upon Mount Sinai. It happened that no-
body lived there to contradict the account.
The Christian books tell us of a star that hung over the stable at
the birth of Jesus. There is no star there now, nor any person living
that saw it. But all the stars in the heavens bear eternal evidence to
the truth of Deism. It did not begin in a stable, nor in a wilderness. It
began everywhere. The theater of the universe is the place of its
birth.
As adoration paid to any being but GOD Himself is idolatry: the
Christian religion by paying adoration to a man, born of a woman
called Mary, belongs to the idolatrous class of religions; conse-
quently the consolation drawn from it is delusion.
Between you and your rival in communion ceremonies, Dr.
Moore of the Episcopal Church, you have, in order to make your-
selves appear of some importance, reduced General Hamilton’s
character to that of a feeble minded man, who in going out of the
world wanted a passport from a priest. Which of you was first or last
applied to for this purpose is a matter of no consequence.
The man, Sir, who puts his trust and confidence in God, that
leads a just and moral life, and endeavors to do good, does not trou-
ble himself about priests when his hour of departure comes, nor per-
mit priests to trouble themselves about him. They are in general
mischievous beings where character is concerned; a consultation of
priests is worse than a consultation of physicians.
OF THE OLD AND
NEW TESTAMENT
rchbishop Tillotson says: “The difference between the style
A of the Old and New Testament is so very remarkable, that
one of the greatest sects in the primitive times, did, upon this very
ground, found their heresy of two Gods, the one evil, fierce, and
cruel, whom they called the God of the Old Testament; the other
good, kind, and merciful, whom they called the God of the New Tes-
tament; so great a difference is there between the representations that
are given of God in the books of the Jewish and Christian religion, as
to give, at least, some color and pretence to an imagination of two
Gods.” Thus far Tillotson.
But the case was, that as the Church had picked out several pas-
sages from the Old Testament, which she most absurdly and falsely
calls prophecies of Jesus Christ, (whereas there is no prophecy of
any such person, as any one may see by examining the passages and
the cases to which they apply,) she was under the necessity of keep-
ing up the credit of the Old Testament, because if that fell the other
would soon follow, and the Christian system of faith would soon be
at an end.
As a book of morals, there are several parts of the New Testa-
ment that are good; but they are no other than what had been
preached in the Eastern world several hundred years before Christ
was born. Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, who lived five hun-
dred years before the time of Christ, says, Acknowledge thy benefits
by the return of benefits, but never revenge injuries.
The clergy in Popish countries were cunning enough to know
that if the Old Testament was made public the fallacy of the New,
with respect to Christ, would be detected, and they prohibited the use
of it, and always took it away wherever they found it.
Thomas Paine 332
The Deists, on the contrary, always encouraged the reading it,

that people might see and judge for themselves, that a book so full of
contradictions and wickedness could not be the word of God, and
that we dishonor God by ascribing it to Him.
BIBLICAL ANACHRONISM
n addition to the judicious remarks in your twelfth number, on
I the absurd story of Noah’s Flood, in Genesis vii, I send you
the following:
The second verse makes God to say unto Noah, “Of every clean
beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female, and
of every beast that are not clean, by two, the male and his female.”
Now, there was no such thing as beasts clean and unclean in the
time of Noah. Neither were there any such people as Jews or Israel-
ites at that time, to whom that distinction was a law. The law, called
the Law of Moses, by which a distinction is made, beasts clean and
unclean, was not until several hundred years after the time that Noah
is said to have lived.
The story, therefore, detects itself, because the inventor forgot
himself, by making God make use of an expression that could not be
used at the time. The blunder is of the same kind, as if a man in telling
a story about America a hundred years ago, should quote an expres-
sion from Mr. Jefferson’s inaugural speech as if spoken by him at
that time.
My opinion of this story is the same as what a man once said to
another, who asked him in a drawling tone of voice, “Do you believe
the account about No-ah?” The other replied in the same tone of
voice, ah-no.
THOMAS PAINE’S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIAN
ACCOUNTS OF
CHARISMATIC CHRISTIAN
REVIVALS
MADE BY CLERGYMAN GEORGE SCOTT, OF
MILL CREEK, WASHINGTON COUNTY,
PENNSYLVANIA TO COLONEL WILLIAM
M’FARRAN DATED NOVEMBER 3, 1802.
n the fifth chapter of Mark, we read a strange story of the devil

I getting into the swine after he had been turned out of a man,
and as the freaks of the devil in that story and the tumble-down de-
scription in this are very much alike, the two stories ought to go to-
gether.
The force of the imagination is capable of producing strange ef-
fects. When animal magnetism began in France, which was while
Doctor Franklin was Minister to that country, the wonderful ac-
counts given of the wonderful effects it produced on the persons who
were under operation, exceeded anything related in the foregoing
letter from Washington County. They tumbled down, fell into
trances, roared and rolled about like persons supposed to be be-
witched.
The Government, in order to ascertain the fact, or detect the im-
position, appointed a committee of physicians to inquire into the
case, and Doctor Franklin was requested to accompany them, which
he did. The committee went to the operator’s house, and the persons
on whom an operation was to be performed were assembled. They
were placed in the position in which they had been when under for-
mer operations, and blindfolded.
In a little time they began to show signs of agitation, and in the
space of about two hours they went through all the frantic airs they
had shown before; but the case was, that no operation was perform-
ing upon them, neither was the operator in the room, for he had been
ordered out of it by the physicians; but as the persons did not know
this, they supposed him present and operating upon them. It was the
effect of imagination only.
Doctor Franklin, in relating this account to the writer of this arti-
cle, said, that he thought the government might as well have let it
gone on, for that as imagination sometimes produced disorders it
might also cure some. It is fortunate, however, that this falling down
and crying out scene did not happen in New England a century ago,
for if it had the preachers would have been hung for witchcraft, and
in more ancient times the poor falling down folks would have been
supposed to be possessed of a devil, like the man in Mark, among the
tombs. The progress that reason and Deism make in the world lessen
the force of superstition, and abate the spirit of persecution.
MY PRIVATE THOUGHTS
ON A FUTURE STATE
have said, in the first part of the “Age of Reason,” that “I

I hope for happiness after this life.” This hope is comfortable to
me, and I presume not to go beyond the comfortable idea of hope,
with respect to a future state.
I consider myself in the hands of my Creator, and that He will
dispose of me after this life consistently with His justice and good-
ness. I leave all these matters to Him, as my Creator and friend, and I
hold it to be presumption in man to make an article of faith as to what
the Creator will do with us hereafter.
I do not believe because a man and a woman make a child, that it
imposes on the Creator the unavoidable obligation of keeping the be-
ing so made in eternal existence hereafter. It is in His power to do so,
or not to do so, and it is not in our power to decide which He will do.
The book called the New Testament, which I hold to be fabulous
and have shown to be false, gives an account in Matthew xxv of what
is there called the last day, or the day of judgment.
The whole world, according to that account, is divided into two
parts, the righteous and the unrighteous, figuratively called the sheep
and the goats. They are then to receive their sentence. To the one, fig-
uratively called the sheep, it says, “Come ye blessed of my Father, in-
herit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the
world.” To the other, figuratively called the goats, it says, “Depart
from me, ye cursed, into the everlasting fire, prepared for the devil
and his angels.”
Not the case is, the world cannot be thus divided: the moral
world, like the physical world, is composed of numerous degrees of
character, running imperceptibly one into the other, in such a manner
that no fixed point of division can be found in either. That point is no-
where, or is everywhere.
The whole world might be divided into two parts numerically,
but not as to moral character; and therefore the metaphor of dividing
them, as sheep and goats can be divided, whose difference is marked
by their external figure, is absurd. All sheep are still sheep; all goats
are still goats; it is their physical nature to be so. But one part of the
world are not all good alike, nor the other part all wicked alike. There
are some exceedingly good; others exceedingly wicked.
There is another description of men who cannot be ranked with
either the one or the other – they belong neither to the sheep nor the
goats; and there is still another description of them who are so very
insignificant, both in character and conduct, as not to be worth the
trouble of damning or saving, or of raising from the dead.
My own opinion is, that those whose lives have been spent in
doing good, and endeavoring to make their fellow-mortals happy, for
this is the only way in which we can serve God, will be happy hereaf-
ter; and that the very wicked will meet with some punishment. But
those who are neither good nor bad, or are too insignificant for no-
tice, will be dropped entirely.
This is my opinion. It is consistent with my idea of God’s jus-
tice, and with the reason that God has given me, and I gratefully
know that He has given me a large share of that divine gift.
— Thomas Paine
Humorous Poem
The Monk and the Jew
By Thomas Paine
An unbelieving Jew one day

Was skating o’er the icy way,
Which being brittle let him in,
Just deep enough to catch his chin;
And in that woful plight he hung,
With only power to move his tongue.
A brother skater near at hand,
A Papist born in foreign land,
With hasty strokes directly flew
To save poor Mordecai the Jew -
“But first,” quoth he, “I must enjoin
That you renounce your faith for mine;
There’s no entreaties else will do,
‘Tis heresy to help a Jew –”
“Forswear mine fait! No! Cot forbid!

Dat would be very base indeed,
Come never mind such tings as deeze,
Tink, tink, how fery hard it freeze.
More coot you do, more coot you be,
Vat signifies your faith to me?
Come tink agen, how cold and vet,
And help me out von little bit.”
“By holy mass, ’tis hard, I own,

To see a man both hang and drown,
And can’t relieve him from his plight
Because he is an Israelite;
The Church refuses all assistance,

Beyond a certain pale and distance;
And all the service I can lend
Is praying for your soul, my friend.”
“Pray for my soul, ha! ha! You make me laugh.

You petter help me out py half:
Mine soul I farrant vill take care,
To pray for her own self, my tear:
So tink a little now for me,
’Tis I am in de hole not she.”
“The Church forbids it, friend, and saith

That all shall die who had no faith.”
“Vell, if I must peblieve, I must.
But help me out von little first.”
“No, not an inch without Amen

That seals the whole” – “Vell, hear me den,
I here renounce for coot and all
De race of Jews both great and small;
’Tis de vurst trade peneath the sun,
Or vurst religion; dat’s all von.
Dey cheat, and get deir living py’t,
And lie, and swear the lie is right.
I’ll co to mass as soon as ever
I get to toder side the river.
So help me out, dow Christian friend,
Dat I may do as I intend.”
“Perhaps you do intend to cheat,

If once you get upon your fee.”
“No, no, I do intend to be
A Christian, such as one as dee.”
For, thought the Jew, he is as much
a Christian man as I am such.
Thomas Paine 340
The bigot Papist joyful hearted

To hear the heretic converted,
Replied to the designing Jew,
“This was a happy fall for you:

You’d better die a Christian now,
For if you live you’ll break your vow.”
Then said no more, but in trice
Popp’d Mordecai beneath the ice.
ON DEISM, AND THE
WRITINGS OF
THOMAS PAINE
he following reflections, written last winter, were occa-

T sioned by certain expressions in some of the public papers
against Deism and the writings of Thomas Paine on that subject.
“Great is Diana of the Ephesians,” was the cry of the people of
Ephesus (Acts xix. 28); and the cry of “our holy religion” has been
the cry of superstition in some instances, and of hypocrisy in others,
from that day to this.
The Brahmin, the follower of Zoroaster, the Jew, the
Mahometan, the Church of Rome, the Greek Church, the Protestant
Church, split into several hundred contradictory sectaries, preaching
in some instances damnation against each other, all cry out, “our
holy religion.”
The Calvinist, who damns children of a span long to hell to burn
forever for the glory of God, (and this is called Christianity), and the
Universalist who preaches that all shall be saved and none shall be
damned, (and this also is called Christianity), boast alike of their
holy religion and their Christian faith.
Something more therefore is necessary than mere cry and
wholesale assertion, and that something is TRUTH; and as inquiry is
the road to truth, he that is opposed to inquiry is not a friend to truth.
The God of Truth is not the God of fable; when, therefore, any
book is introduced into the world as the Word of God, and made a
ground-work for religion, it ought to be scrutinized more than other
books to see if it bear evidence of being what it is called. Our rever-
ence to God demands that we do this, lest we ascribe to God what is
Thomas Paine 342
not His, and our duty to ourselves demands it lest we take fable for
fact, and rest our hope of salvation on a false foundation.
It is not our calling a book holy that makes it so, any more than
our calling a religion holy that entitles it to the name. Inquiry there-
fore is necessary in order to arrive at truth. But inquiry must have
some principle to proceed on, some standard to judge by, superior to
human authority.
When we survey the works of Creation, the revolutions of the
planetary system, and the whole economy of what is called nature,
which is no other than the laws the Creator has prescribed to matter,
we see unerring order and universal harmony reigning throughout
the whole. No one part contradicts another. The sun does not run
against the moon, nor the moon against the sun, nor the planets
against each other. Everything keeps its appointed time and place.
This harmony in the works of God is so obvious, that the farmer
of the field, though he cannot calculate eclipses, is as sensible of it as
the philosophical astronomer. He sees the God of order in every part
of the visible universe.
Here, then, is the standard to which everything must be brought
that pretends to be the work or Word of God, and by this standard it
must be judged, independently of anything and everything that man
can say or do. His opinion is like a feather in the scale compared with
the standard that God himself has set up.
It is, therefore, by this standard, that the Bible, and all other
books pretending to be the Word of God, (and there are many of them
in the world,) must be judged, and not by the opinions of men or the
decrees of ecclesiastical councils. These have been so contradictory,
that they have often rejected in one council what they had voted to be
the word of God in another; and admitted what had been before re-
jected.
In this state of uncertainty in which we are, and which is ren-
dered still more uncertain by the numerous contradictory sectaries
that have sprung up since the time of Luther and Calvin, what is man
to do? The answer is easy. Begin at the root – begin with the Bible it-
self. Examine it with the utmost strictness. It is our duty so to do.
Compare the parts with each other, and the whole with the har-
monious, magnificent order that reigns throughout the visible uni-
verse, and the result will be, that if the same Almighty wisdom that
created the universe dictated also the Bible, the Bible will be as har-
monious and as magnificent in all its parts, and in the whole, as the
universe is.
But if, instead of this, the parts are found to be discordant, con-
tradicting in one place what is said in another, (as in II Sam. xxiv, 1,
and I Chron. xxi, 1, where the same action is ascribed to God in one
book and to Satan in the other,) abounding also in idle and obscene
stories, and representing the Almighty as a passionate, whimsical
Being, continually changing His mind, making and unmaking His
own works as if He did not know what He was about, we may take it
for certainty that the Creator of the universe is not the author of such
a book, that it is not the Word of God, and that to call it so is to dis-
honor His name.
The Quakers, who are a people more moral and regular in their
conduct than the people of other sectaries, and generally allowed so
to be, do not hold the Bible to be the word of God. They call it a his-
tory of the times, and a bad history it is, and also a history of bad men
and of bad actions, and abounding with bad examples.
For several centuries past the dispute has been about doctrines.
It is now about fact. Is the Bible the Word of God, or is it not? For un-
til this point is established, no doctrine drawn from the Bible can af-
ford real consolation to man, and he ought to be careful he does not
mistake delusion for truth. This is a case that concerns all men alike.
There has always existed in Europe, and also in America, since
its establishments, a numerous description of men, (I do not here
mean the Quakers,) who did not, and do not believe the Bible to be
the Word of God. These men never formed themselves into an estab-
lished society, but are to be found in all the sectaries that exist, and
are more numerous than any, perhaps equal to all, and are daily in-
creasing. From Deus, the Latin word for God, they have been de-
nominated Deists, that is, believers in God. It is the most honorable
appellation that can be given to man, because it is derived immedi-
ately from the Deity. It is not an artificial name like Episcopalian,
Thomas Paine 344
Presbyterian, etc., but is a name of sacred signification, and to revile

it is to revile the name of God.
Since then there is so much doubt and uncertainty about the Bi-
ble, some asserting and others denying it to be the Word of God, it is
best that the whole matter come out. It is necessary for the informa-
tion of the world that it should.
A better time cannot offer than while the Government, patroniz-
ing no one sect or opinion in preference to another, protects equally
the rights of all; and certainly every man must spurn the idea of an
ecclesiastical tyranny, engrossing the rights of the press, and holding
it free only for itself.
While the terrors of the Church, and the tyranny of the State,
hung like a pointed sword over Europe, men were commanded to be-
lieve what the Church told them, or go to the stake. All inquiries into
the authenticity of the Bible were shut out by the Inquisition. We
ought therefore to suspect that a great mass of information respecting
the Bible, and the introduction of it into the world, has been sup-
pressed by the united tyranny of Church and State, for the purpose of
keeping people in ignorance, and which ought to be known.
The Bible has been received by the Protestants on the authority
of the Church of Rome, and on no other authority. It is she that has
said it is the Word of God. We do not admit the authority of that
Church with respect to its pretended infallibility, its manufactured
miracles, its setting itself up to forgive sins, its amphibious doctrine
of transubstantiation, etc.; and we ought to be watchful with respect
to any book introduced by her, or her ecclesiastical councils, and
called by her the Word of God: and the more so, because it was by
propagating that belief and supporting it by fire and faggot, that she
kept up her temporal power.
That the belief of the Bible does no good in the world, may be
seen by the irregular lives of those, as well priests as laymen, who
profess to believe it to be the Word of God, and the moral lives of the
Quakers who do not. It abounds with too many ill examples to be
made a rule for moral life, and were a man to copy after the lives of
some of its most celebrated characters, he would come to the gal-
lows.
Thomas Paine has written to show that the Bible is not the Word
of God, that the books it contains were not written by the persons to
whom they are ascribed, that it is an anonymous book, and that we
have no authority for calling it the Word of God, or for saying it was
written by inspired penmen, since we do not know who the writers
were.
This is the opinion not only of Thomas Paine, but of thousands
and tens of thousands of the most respectable characters in the
United States and in Europe. These men have the same right to their
opinions as others have to contrary opinions, and the same right to
publish them. Ecclesiastical tyranny is not admissible in the United
States.
With respect to morality, the writings of Thomas Paine are re-
markable for purity and benevolence; and though he often enlivens
them with touches of wit and humor, he never loses sight of the real
solemnity of his subject. No man’s morals, either with respect to his
Maker, himself, or his neighbor, can suffer by the writings of
Thomas Paine.
It is now too late to abuse Deism, especially in a country where
the press is free, or where free presses can be established. It is a reli-
gion that has God for its patron and derives its name from Him. The
thoughtful mind of man, wearied with the endless contentions of
sectaries against sectaries, doctrines against doctrines, and priests
against priests, finds its repose at last in the contemplative belief and
worship of one God and the practice of morality; for as Pope wisely
says,
“He can’t be wrong, whose life is in the right."
End Notes
Part First
1. As there are many readers who do not see that a composition

is poetry unless it be in rhyme, it is for their information that I add
this note.
Poetry consists principally in two things – imagery and compo-
sition. The composition of poetry differs from that of prose in the
manner of mixing long and short syllables together. Take a long syl-
lable out of a line of poetry, and put a short one in the room of it, or
put a long syllable where a short one should be, and that line will lose
its poetical harmony. It will have an effect upon the line like that of
misplacing a note in a song. The imagery in those books, called the
Prophets, appertains altogether to poetry. It is fictitious, and often
extravagant, and not admissible in any other kind of writing than po-
etry. To show that these writings are composed in poetical numbers, I
will take ten syllables, as they stand in the book, and make a line of
the same number of syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with
the last word. It will then be seen that the composition of these books
is poetical measure. The instance I shall produce is from Isaiah:
“Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth!”
Tis God himself that calls attention forth.
Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jeremiah, to
which I shall add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out the
figure, and showing the intention of the poet:
“O! that mine head were waters and mine eyes”
Were fountains flowing like the liquid skies;
The would I give the mighty flood release,
And weep a deluge for the human race.
- Author.
2. It is impossible for us now to know at what time the heathen

mythology began; but it is certain, from the internal evidence that it
carries, that it did not begin in the same state or condition in which it
ended. All the gods of that mythology, except Saturn, were of mod-
ern invention. The supposed reign of Saturn was prior to that which
is called the heathen mythology, and was so far a species of theism,
that it admitted the belief of only one God. Saturn is supposed to
have abdicated the government in favor of his three sons and one
daughter, Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune and Juno; after this, thousands of
other gods and demi-gods were imaginarily created, and the calendar
of gods increased as fast as the calendar of saints and the calendar of
courts have increased since.
All the corruptions that have taken place in theology and in reli-
gion have been produced by admitting of what man calls revealed re-
ligion. The Mythologists pretended to more revealed religion than
the Christians do. They had their oracles and their priests, who were
supposed to receive and deliver the word of God verbally, on almost
all occasions.
Since then, all corruptions, down from Moloch to modern
predestinarianism, and the human sacrifices of the heathens to the
Christian sacrifice of the Creator, have been produced by admitting
of what is called revealed religion. The most effectual means to pre-
vent all such evils and impositions is not to admit of any other revela-
tion than that which is manifested in the book of creation, and to
contemplate the creation as the only true and real Word of God that
ever did or ever will exist; and that everything else, called the Word
of God, is fable and imposition. – Author
3. As this book may fall into the hands of persons who do not
know what an orrery is, it is for their information I add this note, as
the name gives no idea of the uses of the thing. The orrery has its
name from the person who invented it. It is a machinery of
clock-work, representing the universe in miniature, and in which the
revolution of the earth round itself and round the sun, the revolution
of the moon round the earth, the revolution of the planets round the
sun, their relative distances from the sun, as the center of the whole
system, their relative distances from each other and their different
Thomas Paine 348
magnitudes, are represented as they really exist in what we call the

heavens. – Author.
4. If it should be asked, how can man know these things? I have
one plain answer to give, which is, that man knows how to calculate
an eclipse, and also how to calculate to a minute of time when the
planet Venus in making her revolutions around the sun will come in a
straight line between our earth and the sun, and will appear to us
about the size of a large pea passing across the face of the sun. This
happens but twice in about a hundred years, at the distance of about
eight years from each other, and has happened twice in our time, both
of which were foreknown by calculation. It can also be known when
they will happen again for a thousand years to come, or to any other
portion of time. As, therefore, man could not be able to do these
things if he did not understand the solar system, and the manner in
which the revolutions of the several planets or worlds are performed,
the fact of calculating an eclipse, or a transit of Venus, is a proof in
point that the knowledge exists; and as to a few thousand, or even a
few million miles, more or less, it makes scarcely any sensible differ-
ence in such immense distances. – Author.
Part Second
1. I observed, as I passed along, several broken and senseless
passages in the Bible, without thinking them of consequence enough
to be introduced in the body of the work; such as that, I. Samuel,
chap. Xiii. Ver. 1, where it is said, “Saul reigned one year; and when
he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him three thousand
men,” etc. The first part of the verse, that Saul reigned one year, has
non sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor say anything of
what happened at the end of that one year; and it is, besides, mere ab-
surdity to say he reigned one year, when the very next phrase says he
had reigned two; for if he had reigned two, it was impossible not to
have reigned one.
Another instance occurs in Joshua, chap. V, where the writer
tells us a story of an angel (for such the table of contents as the head
of the chapter tells him) appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends
abruptly, and without any conclusion. The story is as follows: Verse
13. “And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted
up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a man over against
him with his sword drawn in his hand; and Joshua went unto him and
said unto him, Art thou for us or for our adversaries?” Verse 14,
“And he said, Nay; but as captain of the hosts of the Lord am I now
come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and
said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?” Verse 15, “And
the captain of the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, Loose they shoe from
off they foot; for the place whereon thou standeth is holy. And
Joshua did so.” And what then? nothing, for here the story ends, and
the chapter too.
Either the story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told by
some Jewish humorist, in ridicule of Joshua’s pretended mission
from God; and the compilers of the Bible, not perceiving the design
of the story, have told it as a serious matter. As a story of humor and
ridicule it has a great deal of point, for it pompously introduces an
angel in the figure of a man, with a drawn sword in his hand, before
whom Joshua falls on his face to the earth and worships (which is
contrary to their second commandment); and then this most impor-
tant embassy from heaven ends in telling Joshua to pull off his shoe.
It might as well have told him to pull up his breeches.
It is certain, however, that the Jews did not credit everything
their leaders told them, as appears from the cavalier manner in which
they speak of Moses, when he was gone into the mount. “As for Mo-
ses,” say they, “we wot not what is become of him.” Exod. Chap.
xxxii, ver. 1. – Author
2. Particulars of the Families from the second Chapter of Ezra.
Chap. ii. Bro’t for. 12,243 Bro’t for. 15,953 Bro’t for. 24,144
Verse 3 2172 Verse14 2056 Verse 25 743 Verse 36 973
4 372 15 454 26 621 37 1052
5 775 16 98 27 122 38 1247
6 2812 17 323 28 223 39 1017
7 1254 18 112 29 52 40 74
8 945 19 223 30 156 41 128
9 760 20 95 31 1254 42 139
10 642 21 123 32 320 53 392
Thomas Paine 350
11 623 22 56 33 725 60 652

12 1222 23 128 34 345
13 666 24 42 35 3630
12,243 15,953 24,144 Total, 29,818

— Author
3. The prayer known by the name of Agur’s prayer, in the 30th
chapter of Proverbs, immediately preceding the proverbs of Lemuel,
and which is the only sensible, well-conceived and well-expressed
prayer in the Bible, has much the appearance of being a prayer taken
from the Gentiles. The name of Agur occurs on no other occasion
than this; and he is introduced, together with the prayer ascribed to
him, in the same manner, and nearly in the same words, that Lemuel
and his proverbs are introduced in the chapter that follows. The first
verse of the 30th chapter says, “The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh,
even the prophecy.” Here the word prophecy is used in the same ap-
plication it has in the following chapter of Lemuel, unconnected with
any thing of prediction. The prayer of Agur is in the 8th and 9th verses,
“Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor
riches; feed me with food convenient for me; lest I be full and deny
thee, and say, Who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal, and take
the name of my God in vain.” This has not any of the marks of being
a Jewish prayer, for the Jews never prayed but when they were in
trouble, and never for anything but victory, vengeance and riches.
– Author.
th th
4. I observed two chapters, 16 and 17 , in the first book of
Samuel, that contradict each other with respect to David, and the
manner he became acquainted with Saul; as the 37th and 38th chapters
of the book of Jeremiah contradict each other with respect to the
cause of Jeremiah’s imprisonment.
In the 16th chapter of Samuel, it is said, that an evil spirit of God
troubled Saul, and that his servants advised him (as a remedy) “to
seek out a man who was a cunning player upon the harp.” And Saul
said, [verse 17,] Provide me now a man that can play well, and bring
him to me. Then answered one of the servants, and said, Behold I
have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing,
and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters,
and a comely person, and the LORD is with him. Wherefore Saul
sent messengers unto Jesse, and said, “Send me David thy son.” And
[verse 21,] David came to Saul, and stood before him, and he loved
him greatly, and he became his armor-bearer. And when the evil
spirit from God was upon Saul [ver. 23] that David took an harp, and
played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well.”
But the next chapter [17] gives an account, all different to this,
of the manner that Saul and David became acquainted. Here it is as-
cribed to David’s encounter with Goliah, when David was sent by his
father to carry provision to his brethren in the camp. In the 55th verse
of this chapter it is said, “And when Saul saw David go forth against
the Philistine [Goliah], he said unto Abner, the captain of the host,
Abner, whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth,
O king, I cannot tell. And the king said, Enquire thou whose son the
stripling is. And as David returned from the slaughter of the
Philistine, Abner took him, and brought him before Saul with the
head of the Philistine in his hand. And Saul said to him, Whose son
art thou young man? And David answered, I am the son of thy ser-
vant Jesse the Bethlehemite.” These two accounts belie each other,
because each of them supposes Saul and David not to have known
each other before. This book, the Bible is too ridiculous even for crit-
icism. – Author.
5. From the birth of David to the birth of Christ is upwards of
1080 years; and as the lifetime of Christ is not included, there are but
27 full generations. To find therefore the average age of each person
mentioned in the list, at the time his first son was born, it is only nec-
essary to divide 1080 years by 27, which gives 40 years for each per-
son. As the lifetime of man was then but the same extent it is now, it
is an absurdity to suppose that 27 following generations should all be
old bachelors, before they married; and the more so, when we are
told, that Solomon, the next in succession to David, had a house full
of wives and mistresses before he was twenty-one years of age. So
far from this genealogy being a solemn truth, it is not even a reason-
able lie. This list of Luke gives about twenty-six years for the aver-
age age, and this is too much. – Author.
6. The former part of the “The Age of Reason” has not been pub-
lished in two years, and there is already an expression in it that is not
Thomas Paine 352
mine. The expression is, The book of Luke was carried by a majority
of one voice only. It may be true, but it is not I that have said it. Some
person, who might know of the circumstance, has added it in a note
at the bottom of the page of some of the editions, printed either in
England or in America; and the printers, after that, have placed it into
the body of the work, and made me the author of it. If this has hap-
pened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of
printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually, what
may not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there
was no printing, and when any man who could write could make a
written copy, and call it an original by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or
John? – Author.
7. Boulanger, in his Life of Paul, has collected from the ecclesi-
astical histories, and from the writings of fathers, as they are called,
several matters which show the opinions that prevailed among the
different sects of Christians at the time the Testament, as we now see
it, was voted to be the word of God. The following extracts are from
the second chapter of that work.
“The Marcionists, (a Christian sect,) assumed that the evange-
lists were filled with falsities. The Manicheans, who formed a very
numerous sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false
all the New Testament, and showed other writings quite different that
they gave for authentic. The Cerinthians, like the Marcionists, ad-
mitted not the Acts of the Apostles. The Encratites, and the
Severians, adopted neither the Acts nor the Epistles of Paul.
Chrysostom, in a homily which he made upon the Acts of the Apos-
tles, says that in his time, about the year 400, many people knew
nothing either of the author or of the book. St. Irene, who lived be-
fore that time, reports that the Valentinians, like several other sects of
Christians, accused the scriptures of being filled with imperfections,
errors, and contradictions. The Ebionites, or Nazarines, who were
the first Christians, rejected all the Epistles of Paul and regarded him
as an impostor. They report, among other things, that he was origi-
nally a pagan, that he came to Jerusalem, where he lived some time;
and that having a mind to marry the daughter of the high priest, he
caused himself to be circumcised: but that not being able to obtain
her, he quarreled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision, and
against the observance of the sabbath, and against all the legal ordi-
nances. – Author.
8. According to what is called Christ’s sermon on the mount, in

the book of Matthew, where, among some other good things, a great
deal of this feigned morality is introduced, it is there expressly said,
that the doctrine of forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not
any part of the doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine is found in
Proverbs it must, according to that statement, have been copied from
the Gentiles, from whom Christ had learned it. Those men, whom
Jewish and Christian idolaters have abusively called heathens, had
much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be
found in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish; or in the New. The
answer of Solon on the question, Which is the most perfect popular
government? has never been exceeded by anyone since his time, as
containing a maxim of political morality. “That,” says he, “where the
least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult
on the whole constitution.” Solon lived about 500 years before
Christ. – Author.
9. The Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first

chapter of Genesis, an account of the creation; and in doing this, they
have demonstrated nothing but their ignorance. They make there to
have been three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, be-
fore there was a sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that
is the cause of day and night, and what is called his rising and setting
that of morning and evening. Besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea,
to suppose the Almighty to say, Let there be light. It is the imperative
manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups and
balls, Presto, begone, and most probably has been taken from it; as
Moses and his rod are a conjuror and his wand. Longinus calls this
expression the sublime; and by the same rule, the conjuror is sublime
too, for the manner of speaking is expressively and grammatically
the same. When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not
how nearly it borders on the ridiculous. The sublime of the critics,
like some parts of Edmund Burke’s Sublime and Beautiful, is like a
windmill just visible in a fog, which imagination might distort into a
flying mountain, or an archangel, or a flock of wild geese. – Author.
Thomas Paine 354
Part Third
1. II. Chron. xxviii. 1. Ahaz was twenty years old when he began
to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, but he did not
that which was right in the sight of the Lord. – ver. 5. Wherefore the
Lord his God delivered him into the hand of the King of Syria, and
they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captive
and brought them to Damascus; and he was also delivered into the
hand of the King of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter. –
ver. 6. And Pekah (King of Israel) slew in Judah an hundred and
twenty thousand in one day. – ver. 8. And the children of Israel car-
ried away captive of their brethren two hundred thousand women,
sons, and daughter.
2. In the second part of the ‘Age of Reason,’ I have shown that the
book ascribed to Isaiah is not only miscellaneous as to matter, but as to au-
thorship; that there are parts in it which could not be written by Isaiah, be-
cause they speak of things one hundred and fifty years after he was dead.
The instance I have given of this, in that work, corresponds with the subject
I am upon, at least a little better than Matthew’s introduction and his ques-
tion.
Isaiah lived, the latter part of his life, in the time of Hezekiah, and it
was about one hundred and fifty years from the death of Hezekiah to the
first year of the reign of Cyrus, when Cyrus published a proclamation,
which is given in Ezra i., for the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. It cannot
be doubted, at least it ought not to be doubted, that the Jews would feel an
affectionate gratitude for this act of benevolent justice, and it is natural they
would express that gratitude in the customary stile, bombastical and hyper-
bolical as it was, which they used on extraordinary occasions, and which
was and still is in practice with all the eastern nations.
The instance to which I refer, and which is given in the second part of
the Age of Reason, Is. xliv. 28 and xlv. 1, in these words: “That saith of
Cyrus, he is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to
Jerusaalm, Thou shalt be built, and to the Temple, Thy foundation shall be
laid. Thus saith the Lard to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have
holden to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to
open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut.”
This complimentary address is in the present tense, which shows that

the things of which it speaks were in existence at the time of writing it; and
consequently that the author must have been at least one hundred and fifty
years later than Isaiah, and that the book which bears his name is a compila-
tion. The Proverbs called Solomon’s, and the Psalms called David’s, are of
the same kind. The last two verses of the second book of Chronicles, and
the first three verses of Ezra i. are word for word the same; which show that
the compilers of the Bible mixed the writings of different authors together,
and put them under some common head.
As we have here an instance in Isaiah xliv. and xlv. of the intro-

duction of the name of Cyrus into a book to which it cannot belong, it
affords good ground to conclude, that the passage in chapter xlii., in
which the character of Cyrus is given without his name, has been in-
troduced in like manner, and that the person there spoken of is Cyrus.
– Author
3. Whiston, in his Essay on the Old Testament, says, that the passage
of Zechariah of which I have spoken, was, in the copies of the Bible of the
first century, in the book of Jeremiah, from whence, says he, it was taken
and inserted without coherence in that of Zechariah. Well, let it be so, it
does not make the case a whit the better for the New Testament; but it
makes the case a great deal the worse for the Old.
Because it shows, as I have mentioned respecting some passages in a

book ascribed to Isaiah, that the works of different authors have been so
mixed and confounded together, they cannot now be discriminated, except
where they are historical, chronological, or biographical, as in the interpo-
lation in Isaiah. It is the name of Cyrus, inserted where it could not be in-
serted, as he was not in existence till one hundred and fifty years after the
time of Isaiah, that detects the interpolation and the blunder with it.
Whiston was a man of great literary learning, and what is of much

higher degree, of deep scientific learning. He was one of the best and most
celebrated mathematicians of his time, for which he was made professor of
mathematics of the University of Cambridge. He wrote so much in defence
of the Old Testament, and of what he calls prophecies of Jesus Christ, that
at last he began to suspect the truth of the Scriptures, and wrote against
them; for it is only those who examine them, that see the imposition. Those
who believe them most, are those who know least about them.
Thomas Paine 356
Whiston, after writing so much in defence of the Scriptures, was

at last prosecuted for writing against them. It was this that gave occa-
sion to Swift, in his ludicrous epigram on Ditton and Whiston, each
of which set up to find out the longitude, to call the one good master
Ditton and the other wicked Will Whiston. But as Swift was a great
associate with the Freethinkers of those days, such as Bolingbroke,
Pope, and others, who did not believe the book called the scriptures,
there is no certainty whether he wittily called him wicked for defend-
ing the scriptures, or for writing against them. The known character
of Swift decides for the former. – Author
4. Newton, Bishop of Bristol in England, published a work in three
volumes, entitled, “Dissertations on the Prophecies.” The work is tediously
written and tiresome to read. He strains hard to make every passage into a
prophecy that suits his purpose. Among others, be makes this expression of
Moses, “the Lord shall raise thee up a prophet like unto me,” into a proph-
ecy of Christ, who was not born, according to the Bible chronologies, till
fifteen hundred and fifty-two years after the time of Moses; whereas it was
an immediate successor to Moses, who was then near his end, that is spo-
ken of in the passage above quoted.
This bishop, the better to impose this passage on the world as a proph-
ecy of Christ, has entirely omitted the account in the book of Numbers
which I have given at length, word for word, and which shows, beyond the
possibility of a doubt, that the person spoken of by Moses is Joshua, find no
other person.
Newton is but a superficial writer. He takes up things upon hearsay,
and inserts them without either examination or reflection, and the more ex-
traordinary and incredible they are, the better be likes them. In speaking of
the walls of Babylon, (vol. i. p. 263,) he makes a quotation from a traveller
of the name of Tavernaer, whom he calls, (by way of giving credit to what
he says,) a celebrated traveller, that those walls were made of burnt brick,
ten feet square and three feet thick.
If Newton had only thought of calculating the weight of such a brick,
he would have seen the impossibility of their being used or even made. A
brick ten feet square, and three feet thick, contains 300 cubic feet, and al-
lowing a cubic foot of brick to be only one hundred pounds, each of the
Bishop’s bricks would weigh 30,000 pounds; and it would take about thirty
cart loads of clay (one horse carts) to make one brick.
But his account of the stones used in the building of Solomon’s tem-
ple, (vol. ii. p. 211,) far exceeds his bricks of ten feet square in the walls of
Babylon; these are but brick-bats compared to them. The stones (says he)
employed in the foundation, were in magnitude forty cubits, (that is above
sixty feet, a cubit, says he, being somewhat more than one foot and a half,
(a cubit is one foot nine inches,) and the superstructure (says this Bishop)
was worthy of such foundations. There were some stones, says he, of the
whitest marble forty-five cubits long, five cubits high, and six cubits broad.
These are the dimensions this Bishop has given, which, in measure of
twelve inches to a foot, is 78 feet 9 inches long, 10 feet 6 inches broad, and
8 feet 3 inches thick, and contains 7,234 cubic feet.
I now go to demonstrate the imposition of this bishop. A cubic foot of
water weighs sixty-two pounds and a half. The specific gravity of marble
to water is as 2 1-2 is to one. The weight, therefore, of a cubic foot of mar-
ble is 156 pounds, which, multiplied by 7,234, the number of cubic feet in
one of those stones, makes the weight of it to be 1,128,504 pounds, which
is 503 tons.
Allowing then a horse to draw about half a ton, it will require a thou-
sand horses to draw one such stone on the ground; how then were they to be
lifted into the building by human hands? The Bishop may talk of faith re-
moving mountains, but all the faith of all the Bishops that ever lived could
not remove one of those stones, and their bodily strength given in.
This bishop also tells of great guns used by the Turks at the taking of
Constantinople, one of which, he says, was drawn by seventy yoke of
oxen, and by two thousand men. (Vol. iii. p. 117.) The weight of a cannon
that carries a ball of 43 pounds, which is the largest cannon that are cast,
weighs 8,000 pounds, about three tons and a half, and may be drawn by
three yoke of oxen.
Anybody may now calculate what the weight of the Bishop’s great
gun must be, that required seventy yoke of oxen to draw it. This bishop
beats Gulliver.
When men give up the use of the divine gift of reason in writing on
any subject, be it religious or anything else, there are no bounds to their ex-
travagance, no limit to their absurdities. The three volumes which this
Bishop has written on what he calls the prophecies, contain above 1,200
pages, and he says in vol. iii. p. 117, “I have studied brevity.” This is as
marvelous as the bishop’s great gun. – Author.
Thomas Paine 358
Miscellaneous Writings
1. Smith, in speaking of a lodge, says, when the lodge is re-
vealed to an entering Mason, it discovers to him a representation of
the World; in which, from the wonders of nature, we are led to con-
template her great Original, and worship Him from His mighty
works; and we are thereby also moved to exercise those moral and
social virtues which become mankind as the servants of the great Ar-
chitect of the world.
It may not be improper here to observe, that the law called the
law of Moses could not have been in existence at the time of building
this Temple. Here is the likeness of things in heaven above and in
earth beneath. And we read in I Kings vi., vii., that Solomon made
cherubs and cherubims, that he carved all the walls of the house
round about with cherubims, and palm-trees, and open flowers, and
that he made a molten sea, placed on twelve oxen, and the ledges of it
were ornamented with lions, oxen, and cherubims: all this is contrary
to the law called the law of Moses.
2. This Psalm (19) which is a Deistical Psalm, is so much in the
manner of some parts of the book of Job (which is not a book of the
Jews, and does not belong to the Bible), that it has the appearance of
having been translated into Hebrew from the same language in
which the book of Job was originally written, and brought by the
Jews from Chaldea or Persia, when they returned from captivity. The
contemplation of the heavens made a great part of the religious devo-
tion of the Chaldeans and Persians, and their religious festivals were
regulated by the progress of the sun through the twelve signs of the
zodiac. But the Jews knew nothing about the heavens, or they would
not have told the foolish story of the sun’s standing still upon a hill,
and the moon in a valley. What could they want the moon for in the
day time?
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The Age

Predestination – Remarks on Romans IX, 18-21. . . . . . . . . . . . 242

When he returned to America, a nation which in all probability

Elihu Palmer, a blind ex-Presbyterian minister, published a De-

After giving everything he had to America, France, and in fact

Thomas Paine’s dream of a revolution in religion in which all

lieves in God. He makes it very clear he is not a “revealed”

THE AUTHOR’S PROFESSION OF FAITH

make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the

ful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbe-

CONCERNING MISSIONS AND REVELATIONS

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I

tle else than the idolatry of the ancient Mythologists, accommodated

AN APPRECIATION OF THE CHARACTER OF

A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the

probable that Jesus Christ had in contemplation the delivery of the

FABULOUS BASES OF CHRISTIANITY

EXAMINATION OF THE PRECEDING BASES

power increase afterward to infinity. Before this fall they represent

EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

When the Church Mythologists established their system, they

Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of

rank than many other compositions on similar subjects, as well be-

OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

his being betrayed, or in other words, his being apprehended, on the

set up a religion of pomp and revenue, in pretended imitation of a

pay it for me; but if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of

DEFINING THE TRUE REVELATION

purpose, and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power

CONCERNING GOD, AND THE LIGHTS

call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there

Repeats the story of her birth;

structure of the creation that I behold is to me incomprehensible, but

TRUE THEOLOGY AND THAT OF

It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human

CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION,

schools of science and philosophy, and not of languages; and it is in

the study of the dead languages, and to make learning consist, as it

truth, though otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential by

It is an inconsistency scarcely possible to be credited that any-

education, it serves only, like a small capital, to put him in a way of

mankind happier and better is making the story still worse – as if

* Allowing a ship to sail, on an average, three miles in an hour, she would

THE PLAN AND ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE

It is this leaning of the earth (23.5 degrees) that occasions sum-

satellites, in preference to that of creating one world only of a vast

CONCERNING THE MULTIPLICITY

There may be many systems of religion that, so far from being

With respect to mystery, everything we behold is, in one sense, a

THE BEST WAY TO SERVE GOD

compared to our power and to our comprehension, it is not a miracle

giving credit to appearances, under the idea of there being miracles,

to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such miracle by the

In every point of view in which those things called miracles can

PROPHETS AND THEIR PROPHECIES

Everything unintelligible was prophetical, and everything insig-

First – That the idea or belief of a Word of God existing in print,

END OF PART FIRST

my imprisonment, or by any event that might happen to me, it was

I was then with three chamber comrades, Joseph Vanhuele, of

we have of moral justice as anything done by Robespierre, by Car-

is the more proper to be done, because the advocates of the Bible, in

* Euclid, according to Chronological history, lived three years before